


3 ^ 




CATHOLIC NATIONS 

AND 

PROTESTANT NATIONS 




Vialat »Bd C« printers, Lagny. 



CATHOLIC NATIONS 



AND 



PROTESTAMgJATIONS 



COMPARED 



.1 

WEALTH, KNOWLEDGE, AND MORALITY 



IN THEIR THREEFOLD- RELA?tok TO 



NAPOLEON ROUSSEL 




LONDON : 

WARD AND C\. -27, PATER NOSTER ROW 



i 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

FOR T11E FIRST VOLUME. 



Pages. 

Plan of the work 1 

General view 6 

The Two Americas compared 16 

Roman Catholic Ireland and Protestant Scotland compared. . . 75 

Catholic and Protestant Switzerland compared. • 129 

Roman Catholic Austria and Protestant Prussia compared. . . 231 

Catholic Belgium and Protestant Holland compared 269 

Roman Catholic Missions compared with Protestant Missions. . 289 



M. VIAL AT aud C° , Printers LAGKY. 



1 




CATHOLIC NATIONS 



PROTESTANT NATIONS 




Good deeds are the result of truth ; evil is the result of false- 
hood; two modes of expressing the same idea. The true and the 
good are intimately connected, or, to speak more correctly, they 
are hut one. 

All understand what is meant hy " true, " hut what do we 
mean by " good ? " It will be useful here to explain. 

Morality, knowledge, wealth, are, in our estimation, three 
things good in themselves, and for all mankind. 

If the reader dispute this assertion, it will be well to pause 
here; for upon this all our argument rests, as upon an axiom. 

We have said that good deeds are the result of truth, and evil 
of falsehood. The Gospel has proclaimed the same truth in more 
striking terms. Christ has said, " you shall know them by 
their fruits. 39 " A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, nei- 
ther can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. " " Do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or tigs of thistles? " 




COMPARED IN THEIR THREEFOLD RELATION TO 



WEALTH, KNOWLEDGE, AND MORALITY. 



PLAN OF THE WORK. 



i 







If this be so , then, wherever wealth, knowledge , and morality 
shall be found, it may be said, here the truth exists; and where 
misery, ignorance, and vice shall be found, there error reigns. 

Without doubt, if all the good should be found in one hemi- 
sphere , and all the evil in the other , the demonstration would 
amount to proof. But if, without arriving at this complete se- 
paration of good and evil, we should yet find, dispersed over all 
the quarters of the globe, nations moral, enlightened, and pros- 
perous to a certain degree, may we not still say, here truth 
reigns? If at the same time, in close contact with these nations, 
we should meet with others comparatively miserable, ignorant, 
and immoral, shall we not have a right to add, there error reigns? 
Lastly, if this twofold experience should recur in several parts of 
the world, will not these simple probabilities become certainties? 
Such at least is our opinion, and it is in reliance on this principle 
that we proceed to handle our subject. 

During the three last centuries a great question has been agitated 
in Christendom. Catholicism and Reform, opposed in their prin- 
ciples, say, each with equal confidence, " I am the truth. " Cer- 
tain it is that one of the two is mistaken; but which? It is for 
the consequences of these two doctrines to furnish the answer. 
Where morality , knowledge, and wealth exist , there truth will 
be found. Where misery, ignorance, and vice exist, there error 
will be found. Let us then study successively the protestant nations, 
placing by the side of each her catholic neighbour ; and the re- 
sult of the comparison will be, to make us know where error is, 
and where the truth. Here an objection may present itself. We 
may be told that neither all the good, nor ail the evil, is the pro- 
duct of any particular religious faith; that climate, race, and a 
thousand other accidental causes, may contribute to develope or to 
destroy the wealth, the intellect, and the morals of a nation. This 
is true, but their influence is less than it is generally supposed to 
be. In the first place, most of the accidental causes of the civili- 
sation of a people , such as legislation, are themselves the pro- 
ducts of a religious principle ; in the second place, climate and 
races lose their importance as soon as we compare men placed in the 
same latitude, and sprung from the same stock. Further, after 
allowing their due weight to all these accessory circumstances, 
there will always remain to be taken into account the most 
important circumstance of all, the religious conviction; that con- 
viction, even though it be completely erroneous. Unless man is 
pronounced to be only a machine, the mere sport of exterior in- 



s 



fluences, it must be granted that we regulate our conduct by 
good or bad motives, vacillation or firmness. People may give to 
these motives what name they please; but we call them here 
religious principles, and we maintain that they have a great in- 
fluence on individual conduct. 

Lastly, to lessen the chances of error arising from the differ- 
ences of geographical position, political institutions, origin, etc., 
we shall take the elements of each of our comparisons in two na- 
tions placed as nearly as possible in the same circumstances of lati- 
tude, government, and nationality. When, in spite of all our 
efforts, differences still remain, we shall take these matters into 
account in our final appreciation. 

We shall now proceed to place in parallel lines North America 
and South America; Ireland and Scotland; the Swiss protectant 
cantons, and the Swiss catholic cantons; Austria and Prussia, etc. 

If these several comparisons should all give us the same result, it 
may be safely concludedthat the problem often worked, and always 
yielding a similar solution, has at last led us to the discovery of the 
truth. But we shall not rest satisfied even then; we shall re- 
sume the question under another form. Going back three cen- 
turies, and selecting two nations, one essentially protestant, and 
the other essentially catholic, we shall study the case of each sepa- 
rately, and consider its starting point, its progress, and the height 
that it has reached, in order to ascertain which of the two has as- 
cended, and which has descended, in the scale of civilisation, under 
the influence of its religious faith. England and Spain will furnish 
the element of this additional demonstration. To learn the intrinsic 
value of the two religions, we shall then inquire what their fol- 
lowers have become under favour or persecution. This will lead us 
to study the catholics in Italy, and the protestants in France. We 
shall afterwards compare the results obtained by the two churches 
in the fields of their respective missions. 

Whatever may be the conclusion at which we shall ultimately 
arrive, we can imagine beforehand that there are persons who have 
arrived at a contrary one. We ought here, then, to weigh their 
arguments. We do not conceal from ourselves that our undertak- 
ing exposes us to a danger, that of partiality. We feel that we are 
liable to an unconscious partiality, resulting from the religious faith 
of the writer. In order to escape from it, the author will shelter 
himself as much as possible behind authorities. He will present 
facts; even the statement of these will not be his own. The autho- 
rities will be taken, neither from among his friends, nor from 



4 



among his co-religionists ; but, for the most part, from writers ani- 
mated by a different faith from his own, or, at least, from writers 
who have no religious pre-oecupations. 

Staticians, geographers, naturalists , will come forward to fur- 
nish, unintentionally, their testimony in this controversy. 

We are not aware of more than a single point in respect to which 
our work can be attacked ; and that is, as to the choice of docu- 
ments. We may be told that the same writers, if cited in other 
pages of their works, would perhaps have established contrary 
results. With regard to this, we can only affirm that such is not 
our opinion. We are thoroughly convinced that it would be im- 
possible to pick out from the same writers passages to contradict 
the results which they have given us. We have laboured, in refer- 
ence to this, with an uprightness of intention, which is to us a 
guarantee for the truth of our conclusions. Let any one attempt to 
read the whole of our authors , and to extract from them passages 
giving a sense opposed to that contained in those which we have bor- 
rowed , and we feel confident that the most skilful hand will be 
unable to compile from them a work which shall counterbalance 
our statements. 

Lastly, to be strictly accurate, we ought to allow that it would 
undoubtedly be possible to glean, in the field of protestant and 
catholic nations which we have passed over, a few tares in the 
midst of the wheat, and some ears of corn on a barren soil. All 
the good is not in one camp; nor all the evil in the other; in other 
words , it is necessary here to apply the popular adage : " There 
is no rule without an exception. ? But we affirm, that the general 
state of these nations is such as we have described it; and if any 
doubt should still remain in the mind of the reader, the work itself, 
we hope, will have the effect of removing it. 

The present is not a literary performance : the author scarcely 
takes a part in it, but for the choice and classification of documents. 
His work consists in a great measure of the labours of others. It is 
precisely this which gives the greater solidity to his conclusions. 
The more numerous and various our authorities are, the more 
unassailable becomes the cause which they unitedly defend. 

The question relates, not to us who have edited the book, but to 
the truth itself. It matters little that we remain in the shade, pro- 
vided the truth be brought to light; and, for that purpose, the 
united torches of a hundred different writers are worth far more 
than our simple affirmations. 

Next to the variety and the multiplicity of the authors cited, what 



we ought to cause to he specially remarked, and have already 
pointed out. is, that these authors bring their contingent of proofs 
without knowing or intending it. It is neither our thesis, nor 
their own, which they defend; they have spoken, without think- 
ing of the use to which we should put their words. Are not such 
witnesses worthy of confidence? We have, therefore, uniformly 
sought for our authorities, by preference, in the camp opposed to 
the one to which they should naturally have belonged. 

This work might have been composed either of stastistical data, 
or of moral descriptions. The first method has more of precision; 
the second, more of interest. The best method of all, however, as it 
appears to us, is to combine the two; to require of staticians their 
figures, and of travellers their impressions. We shall check the 
former by the latter, and on the agreement of the two, we shall 
rest our convictions. At the same time, we ought to promise 
that we shall assign the smaller space to statistics ; first, because 
that science has said everything when it has given certain nume- 
rals; secondly, because, being in their nature dry, statistics fail 
to leave on the mind any very permanent impressions. Our de- 
scriptive citations will occupy much more space, and the diversity 
of hands that will have traced them will secure to them that con- 
fidence which no single authority could have acquired for them. 
The simple traveller, the studious geographer, the learned natu- 
ralist, the statesman, will come, each in his turn, to add a stroke 
of his brush to the canvas; and, if the result should be an har- 
monious picture, we must conclude that this ensemble of impres- 
sions equals in precision statistical science itself. 

Before we proceed to the study of details, let us take a general 
view of the whole ; before we speak of any particular nation, let us 
say a few words of the Catholic world and of the Protestant world. 



6 



GENERAL VIEW. 



It is from statistics that we shall seek our first general ideas. 
But, before entering on the subject, let us class in two categories, 
according to their religions, the nations that are to engage our 
attention : 



CATHOLIC NATIONS. 

South America. 
Ireland. 

Switzerland, catholic. 

Austria. 

Belgium. 

Spain. 

Italy. 

France. 



PROTESTANT NATIONS. 

North America. 
Scotland. 

Switzerland , protestant. 

Prussia. 

Holland. 

England. 



These two families may be studied in three different points of 
view : Wealth, Knowledge, and Morality. 

Wealth. — Under this title we shall include all that can con- 
tribute to the material prosperity of a nation : 

Agriculture, Industry, Commerce. Let us say a word on each 
of these subdivisions. 

Here is what we read in a work written by M. Moreau de Jonnes, 
a learned statician : 

Extent of cultivation. 

Great Britain one-third. 

Italy 

Prussia " 

The Low-Countries " 

Austria, properly so called , " 

This equality is only apparent. " The British territory, " says 
M. Jonnes, "is almost entirely stripped of forests, and is smitten 
with sterility in a fourth part of its surface l . " Besides, the na- 
tural fertility of England is nothing compared to that of Italy. 
In the next place, the south of Germany, Austria, is also much 
more highly favoured in this respect than is the north, Prussia. 
The extent of cultivation being the same in proportion to the extent 
of the countries, the superiority in civilisation is on the side the 
least favoured by nature. In other words, agriculture is more 
advanced, better understood, in England and in Prussia, than in 



1. Vol. I, pp. 7 41 and 44. 



Italy and Austria ; that is to say, the advantage is on the protes- 
tant side. 

The industry of a country cannot be measured with accuracy by 
its exports, for these include merchandise that has been only ware- 
housed. However, with reference to our subject, this confusion 
is unimportant ; for, what we might withdraw from industry, we 
should add to commerce. 

We shall then take the exports for the proximate measure of 
industry; and afterwards, adding them to the imports, we shall 
take the sum total to measure the extent of commerce. 

The following table is extracted from the same work of M. Jonnes; 
we have , however, omitted countries such as Russia, which are 
alien to our subject, and have divided the list into two parts, in 
order not to have to compare nations that hoJd the first rank with 
those that are the last in the scale of industry : 

Exports. 

FIRST CLASS. 

Holland (in 1835) 

British Isles ( 1835) 

United States ( 1834) 

AVurtemberg ( 1822) 

France ( 1835) , 

Portugal ( 1830) 

SECOND CLASS. 

Danish States {in 1831) 

Sweden and Norway ( 1831) 
Kingdom of Naples. ( 1828) 

Roman States ( 1830) 

Spain ( 1829) 

Austria ( 1829) 

In the first class, four protestant states commence the list, and 
two catholic states conclude it. In the second, two protestant 
states take the lead, and four catholics are in the last ranks. If 
we unite the two lists, 

In the 1st, 4 protestant states have, the advantage over 2 catholic states. 
In the 2nd, 2 protestant states have the advantage over 4 catholic states. 

On the whole, 6 protestant states have the advantage over 6 catholic states. 

Consequently , the six protestant nations show T themselves to be 
more industrious than the six catholic nations. Will the equili- 
brium be re-established by adding the imports to the exports, to 
get at the sum total of general commerce? 
Let us ask another author. 



75 fr. »» per head. 
60 »» — 
32 »» — 
27 »» — 
25 »» — 
20 »> 



16 fr. — 

15 »» — 

7 50 — 

7 »» — 

4 50 — 

3 50 — 



8 



We copy from M. Schnitzler the follow ing table : 



Absolute importance of the chief commercial Poivers t . 



British Empire — 

France 

United States 

Austrian Monarchy, 

Belgium 

Spain 



1,443,638,241 + 2,002,051,641 = 3,445,689,882 



871,600,000 -f- 902,600,000 = 1,774,200,000 

749,478,710 -f 608,467,885 = 1, 357,946,595 

325,449,326 -j- 319,827,168 = 645,276,494 

212,401,858 -f 162,178,520 = 374,580,378 

114,490,000 + 65,547,000 = 180,037,000 



In this list, taking into account the population, two of the coun- 
tries should be differently placed : 1 st , the United States, the popu- 
lation of which is but half that of France; 2 nd , Belgium, the popu- 
lation of which is but the fifteenth part of that of Austria. By 
effecting these changes , we alter the order of absolute importance 
into that of relative importance, the only one necessary for our 
subject, and then we have the following order : 

British Empire. 

United States. 

France. 

Belgium. 

Austrian Monarchy. 
Spain. 

This result confirms that which M. Moreau de Jonnes has given 
us. The two first nations in the order of relative commercial im- 
portance are protestant nations; the two last are Catholic nations. 
Might we venture to add, that the two intermediate nations, al- 
though catholic, are less exclusively so ? However this may be, it 
results from all that precedes, that, to judge by the state of agricul- 
ture, by the progress of industry, and by the extent of commerce, 
the advantage is always on the same side. Now, these elements 
constitute Wealth; there is more Wealth, then, among the 
protestant nations than among the catholic nations. Still, let us 
not decide from such general data; let us defer forming an opinion 
until we have studied each of these nations separately; and, for the 
present, let us proceed to our second point of comparison, namely, 
Knowledge. 

Knowledge. — The number of pupils in the primary schools may 
be given as the measure of the diffusion of knowledge among the 
popular masses ; but it does not prejudge the question as to the 
knowledge of the upper classes. It may suit the policy of a govern- 

1, Schnitzler, vol, iv, p, 2G9. 



ment to grant to its people elementary knowledge, while it puts 
impediments in the way of propagating the sciences. Nevertheless, 
we must rest content with the means that statistical science fur- 
nishes : she can count pupils; she cannot measure intellects. 

Let us first present a document the most simple and brief; we 
will afterwards check it by another more complete. 

We read in M. Schnitzler : 

Primary Instruction. 



In Saxony, one pupil for 6 inhabitants. 

In the Low Countries, one for 6 — 

In Prussia, one for 6 1/6 — 

In Great Britain (England and Wales), one for 8 — 

In Belgium, one for 9 — 

In Austria, one for 10 1/2 — 

In France, one for 11 i — 



The four first nations are protestant ; the three last are catholic. 
If we take the two averages, we have : 

1 pupil for 6 1/2 protestants, 
1 pupil for 10 catholics. 

In other words, the protestants who know how to read an 
write are to the catholics in the proportion of 13 to 20. 
Will M. Jonnes come to confirm, or to contradict M. Schnitzler? 
We read in M. Jonnes : 





1 pupil 


for 6 


inhabitants in 


1833. 


Switzerland, canton de Vaud. . . 




6 




1828. 






7 




1825. 






7 




1825. 






8 




1827. 






10 




1826. 


Prussia 




10 




1825. 


Holland 




8 




1835. 






16 




1822. 






17 




1834. 






30 




1825. 






45 




1818. 






100 




1823. 






109 




1819. 






350 




1835. 






350 




1803. 2 



In this table, copied from Jonnes, we have omitted those countries 
that would cause a double reckoning, as Scotland and Ireland, 
which are included in the British Isles. 
One glance thrown upon this list of sixteen states makes us aware 



l. Vol. II, p. 343. — 2. Vol. II, pp. 333, 334. 



40 

that, with almost a single exception on each side, the first half is 
protestant, and the second catholic. We can even account for 
the anomaly in regard to Bavaria, by observing that a catholic 
nation, situated in the midst of protectant nations, has been 
compelled to receive the light which came to it from all sides, and 
to follow the general impulse. But let us seek a measure more 
exact ; let us place Bavaria among the catholic nations, and Den- 
mark among the protestant; let us no longer count nations, but 
individuals, and we shall have as the average : 

1 pupil for 124 catholics, 
and 1 pupil for 10 protestants. 

In order to be still more exact, let us reduce the catholic return to 
\ in 100, on account of the earlier dates aflixed to some of the coun- 
tries that help to compose it, and we have even then this astonish- 
ing result, that there are ten times more pupils in the aggregate 
of protestant countries, than in the aggregate of catholic countries. 

This report given by Jonnes is infinitely more favourable to pro- 
testants than the report of 43 to 20 found in Schnitzler, because it 
extends to more nations, and above all to catholic nations more 
remote from the radiation of protestant light, such as Spain, Portu^ 
gal, and Italy. The same cannot be said of these countries, that 
can be said of Bavaria, borrowing the words of M. G. de Beaumont 
and of M. A. de Tocqueville; " In the case of a nation surrounded 
by enlightened neighbours , instruction is a political necessity. " 
(Sy steme penitentiaire, part I, ch. III.) An evidence corresponding 
with that of the number of pupils in schools is to be found in the 
number of the readers of journals. The following is the order in 
which Jonnes places them in the different nations of Europe : 

Journals. 



Denmark 80 journals, 1 copy for 24,000 inhabitants. 

Low Countries 150 — 1 — 40,000 — 

Switzerland 54 — 1 — 40,000 — 

Germany 305 — l — 40,000 — 

Prussia 300 — 1 — 44,000 — 

Sweden and Norway 82 — 1 — 44,000 — 

Scotland 41 — 1 — 50,000 — 

France 490 — 1 — 66,000 — 

England 179 1 — 71,000 — 

British Isles 274 — 1 — 88,000 — 

Ireland 54 — l — 135,000 — 

Portugal 17 — 1 — 200,000 — 

Poland (1830) 13 — 1 — 300,000 — 

Greece 3 — l — 300,000 — 



11 

Anstria 80 journals, 1 copy for 400,000 inhabitants. 

Italy 29 — 1 — 750,000 — 

Spain (before 1833) 16 — 1 — 900,000 — 

Russia 31 — 1 — 1,500,000 — 

This table is an exact reproduction of that of Jonnes. With a view 
to our subject, we ought to modify it as follows : 1 st , let us not take 
account of the number of journals, hut only of the number of co- 
pies, because one journal may print a far greater number of copies 
than another : 2 nd, y, let us omit Greece and Russia, countries which 
are neither catholic nor protestant; and also Germany, because its 
mixed population might give occasion to dispute in which class it 
ought to be placed; lastly, the British Isles, the three divisions of 
which are already in the list. Being thus rid of these elements 
foreign to our subject, this table shows that, with regard to the 
extent of the publicity of journals, the six first states are protes- 
tant, and the six last, are catholic. Now, to obtain an exact average, 
let us take into our calculation France and England , placed be- 
tween the two extremes, and we shall have : 

1 copy for 315 protestants, 
1 copy for 2,715 catholics. 

which shows that nine copies are circulated among protestants for 
one copy among catholics. This result confirms and verifies that 
which we found as to the pupils, which was JO to 1. 

This approximation also proves that the knowledge acquired is 
in general turned to account, for we see that ten pupils furnish 
eventually nine readers. 

Let us again check Jonnes by Schnitzler. We read in this last 
author : 

" On the 1 st of January, J 844, there appeared in all 541 jour- 
nals, of which 119 were published in London, 237 in the country, 
11 in Wales, 93 in Scotland (the capital of which, Edinburgh, 
ranks immediately after London), and 71 in Ireland, of which 30 
in Dublin. 

{i In Germany also (a country the greater part of which is protes- 
tant), the number of journals is greater than in most other coun- 
tries. There appear in it, it is said, more than 850 periodical publi- 
cations of every kind; while in Austria, a country essentially 
catholic, there appeared in the year 1841 only 31 political jour- 
nals, disposing of 5, 350 copies, and 52 journals not political, dis- 
posing of 4000. If we add to these all the subscriptions to foreign 
journals, there are not distributed, in all that vast monarchy 
(Hungary excepted), more than 25,500 copies a day (official). 

"In Spain there appeared on the 1 st of January, 1837, 435 jour- 



12 

nals, of which 108 were official bulletins; not taking these into ac- 
count, there were 27 journals in Madrid, and 60 in the provinces. 

" Denmark and Sweden possess, in proportion to their popula- 
tion, a very great number of journals. 

" In the United States, the total, in 1843, was 1,641 journals, of 
which 148 appeared everyday; 1,141 every week; 125 twice or 
thrice a week; and 227 at more distant periods *. " 

On the whole, as respects the number of copies circulated, Schnitz- 
ler gives to England , Germany , Denmark , and Sweden , pro- 
testant countries, the advantage over Austria, Ireland, and Spain, 
catholic countries. This general result of Schnitzler, then, confirms 
the more exac one of Jonnes. We have often seen that our stu- 
dies with reference to nations, viewed collectively, have ended in 
verifying those we have pursued with regard to individuals. In 
thus studying nations, we have more than a simple probability 
of accuracy, we have a complete demonstration; an evident proof 
that the result is not owing to any accidental circumstance , but 
rather to a law. If, for example, in taking the averages, we included 
as an element a return very favourable to protestantism, but bor- 
rowed from a single nation, a return which, oftena appealed to, 
would tend to influence exceedingly the final average, it might be 
said with reason, that this final result was owing to a particular na- 
tion. Bat we have not done this : it is not by seeking only the 
averages that we have been led to give the superiority to pro- 
testantism, but also by taking special account of each member of 
the series. We have seen that, in the lists of 12 or 15 nations, all 
the protestant nations rank first, all the catholic nations rank last. 
When an arithmetical calculation is verified by proofs worked out 
in ten different ways, does any one think of disputing its cor- 
rectness? 

Still, we shall proceed as if this arithmetical calculation, proved 
ten times over, might after all be false, and we shall suspend our 
judgment in regard to Knowledge, as we have suspended it in re- 
gard to Wealth, until we have seen it confirmed or contradicted by 
our further researches with reference to each particular nation. 
Let us then, for the present, proceed to the last point : 
Morality. — While we have judged of Wealth and Knowledge by 
their presence, is it not strange that it is only by negative evidence 
that we are able to solve the question of Morality? It is a sad 
necessity of our nature to have to ascertain which of us has the 



1. Vol. 2. pp. 389, 370. 



13 

least of moral miseries, in oi*det to know which has the most of 
virtue! 

Be this as it may, these moral miseries manifest themselves under 
two principal aspects; acts of violence , and acts of profligacy; as- 
sassinations and corrupt manners. A word on each of these two 
points. 

As many causes contribute to make the appreciation of judges 
differ, we shall take account not only of crimes that have been 
consummated , but also of crimes the perpetration whereof has 
only been begun. Taken alone, the first only indicate the severity 
of human law; joined with the second, they measure more correctly 
the perversity of man. Here, then, is wTiat we read in Jonnes : 

Justice . 



ASSASSINATIONS AND 


ATTEMPTS 


TO ASSASSINATE It 


EUROPE. 


Scotland 


1835.. 


1 for 


270.000 






1 for 


178,000 


Low Countries 


1824.. 


1 for 


163,000 


Prussia 


1824. . 


1 for 


100,000 


Austria 


1809 . . 




57,000 


Spain 


1826 , 


1 for 


4,113 






1 for 


2,750 


Roman States 




1 for 


750* 



Tn this decreasing table of morality, extracted from Jonnes , the 
first four states are protestant; the four last are catholic. To obtain 
a more exact measure, let us take the average, and we shall have 
one assassination, or one attempt to assassinate, for 180,222 inhabi- 
tants in the aggregate of the four protestant nations; and one assassi- 
nation, or one attempt to assassinate , for 16,153 inhabitants in 
the four catholic nations ; in other words, eleven times more crime 
among the Roman catholic nations. 

Let us proceed to the second point, to Morals properly so called, 
which we shall uniformly appreciate by their deficiencies. 

We acknowledge that illegitimate births are not a very certain 
sign by which to estimate the immorality of a nation. Here legal 
marriage is surrounded by so many obstacles, that many unions 
dispense with it. There, the cicisbeos, that is to say, the lovers by 
the side of the husband, ace so completely sanctioned by public opi- 
nion, that immorality, thus legalized, has only the effect of chang- 
ing impurity into adultery. Besides, there is prostitution, which 
destroys the traces of illegitimate unions. In all these cases the 
remedy is worse than the disease. But as we do not pretend to 



l. Jonnes. vol. n, p. 257, 



give exact data on such subjects, we will content ourselves with 
citing such indications as statistics afford us; we shall afterwards 
have an opportunity of verifying their results by other means. 

Here, then, is the table of illegitimate births among the nations 
which are to occupy our attention. 

In this table we no longer place the nations in the order of the 
figures, but we make two sections : one catholic, the other protes- 
tant. Nor do we limit our inquiry to those nations which we shall 
have to compare further on; but we bring together all the data that 
we have been able to discover in different authors. The employ- 
ment of such means is indispensable in a subject so complicated, 
and, by resorting to more numerous elements, we have more chances 
of getting near the truth : 

% 

Natural children. 
Their proportion to legitimate children. 



CATHOLIC NATIONS. 



France 13,98 

Lombardy 23 

Gallicia 12 

Bohemia 6 

Austria, properly so called 3 



57,98 



Divided by 5 the average, is ... . il, 59 



PROTESTANT NATIONS. 

British Isles (in 1830), according 

to Jonnes 19 

Prussia (from 1820 to 1834) .... 13, 12 



48,37 

Divided by 3 the average . is — 16, 12 



Leaving the fractions, the proportion of natural children among 
these catholic and protestant nations is then as 16 to 11 . If we had 
not taken Lombardy into the account, where, very evidently, the 
number of natural children is not a just standard of morals (for the 
reason pointed out above), we should ha^ve had, as the final result, 
twice as many illegitimate children among the catholic nations 
as among the protestant. To avail ourselves of the remark made 
by the authors from whom we have extracted this information : 
" These data confer no great honour on the morals of Austria 
(catholic) l . " 

Having thus taken a summary view of the statistical data of wealth, 
knowledge, and morality, we should like to find some further kind 
of evidence that would illustrate these three subjects, and corro- 
borate the statistical data. It has struck us that the Savings-Banks 
furnish this desideratum. They indicate, in fact, the wealth of the 
people, their spirit of order, as well as a wise economy of their 



1. Schnitzler, vol. i, pp. 284, 285. 



lo 

resources. Without attaching too much importance to them, let 
us cite, on this subject, from the same author : 

SAVINGS-BANKS. 

" It was in England that Savings-Banks were first elevated to the 
rank of an institution. In 1841, there were 563. The amount of 
deposits exceeded 400 millions of francs, belonging to 841,204 de- 
positors. In 1839, there had been only 748,396 depositors, of 
whom 734,089 were individuals, and 14,308 (!!) were charitable 
societies, or of mutual aid. The average deposit of individuals was 
725 francs; that of charitable associations, 1,525. 

" After England, the country most distinguished in this respect is 
Switzerland (the greater part of which is protestant). 

" In the Austrian monarchy, the official reports have registered, 
for 1841, 11 savings-banks, each with many branches. The year 
(1841) has commenced with a deposit of nearly 100 millions " 

Thus, the first place belongs to a protestant country; the second, 
to a country with a mixed population; the third, to a catholic country. 

It is not the first time that we have arrived at this threefo 
result. 

But it is time to leave these generalities. Let us not attach too much 
importance to them; let us wait before we confide in them, or dis- 
trust them until we have studied each nation separately; not so 
much by the data of statistics, the elements of which the reader 
might fear our prejudiced mind had ill chosen; but, above all, by 
giving the opinions^ clearly expressed, of travellers and learned men. 

We have cast a glance over the whole of the globe; let Us now fix 
our attention, for the present, on a single hemisphere, the two Ame- 
ricas; hereafter, we shall direct it to regions more circumscribed. 



i. Schnitzler, vol. 2, p. 268. 



THE 



TWO AMERICAS COMPARED. 



In the plan of our work the two Americas naturally call for a 
comparison; but we must exclude from this comparison the ele- 
ments which; by their nature , do not belong to our subject; such 
as, in the North, the Russian colonies and others of small importance ; 
and in the south, the nations that are strangers to all forms of chris- 
tian worship, in order to have only before us, on the one hand, the 
United States, essentially protestant, and on the other, Brazil, Peru, 
Chili, etc., all catholic states, and of Spanish origin. 

But, before we describe the nations, let us say a few words of these 
regions. 

A difference in the climate does not necessarily produce a corre- 
sponding difference in the inhabitants. 

"The same nations, " says M. de Tocqueville, "have shown them- 
selves, at different epochs of their history, chaste or dissolute : con- 
sequently the regularity, or the disorder of their conduct, was 
produced by some variable cause, and not by the nature of the coun- 
try, which was unchanged 4 . " 

If the influence of climate is considerable elsewhere, facts show 
that it is not so in America. 

" Physical causes have not so great an influence as is supposed on 
the destiny of nations, " says the same writer. " 1 have met with 
men in New England ready to leave their native land, where they 

1. De Tocqueville, vol. iv, pp. 84, 87. 



17 

might ha>e lived in the back-woods, and close to them I have seen 
the French population of Canada crowd themselves into a space 
much too narrow for them, with the same back-woods close at 
hand; and whilst the emigrant from the United States acquired, for 
the price of a few days' labour, a large domain, the Canadian paid 
for his land as dearly as if he were in France. Thus nature, in 
giving up the New World to Europeans, offers them riches, of which 
they do not always know how r to make use. Other nations in Ame- 
rica possess (excepting their laws and morals,) the same elements 
and prosperities as the Anglo-Americans, and these nations are mi- 
serable : therefore the laws and morals of the Anglo-Americans are 
the foundation of their greatness, and form the cause of predomi- 
nance that I seek *. " 

If climate must be taken into account, the advantage is on the 
side of South America, blessed with a clear sky, a fertile soil, and 
maj estic rivers, the longest in the world . "In Brazil, " says Rouge- 
mont, "the maritime districts are extremely fertile; the table- 
land is much less productive, but it is rich in diamonds and me- 
tals 2 . " " The soil, " adds d"Orbigny, " could be easily culti- 
vated, and made very productive like that of Buenos-Ayres, where, 
when they choose to sow, wheat yields fifty-fold, but the time is 
not come for agriculture 3 . " "In the provinces of Rio-Janeiro, 33 
according to Malte-Brun, " all the fruits and grains of Europe 
invariably succeed, but their cultivation is neglected; the grapes 
yield very good wine, but water in the neighbourhood of the rich 
gold mines is preferred. The horned cattle, obliged to seek their 
own food, often perish with hunger 4 . " " Peru and Mexico, " 
according to Balbi, " although situated between the tropics, owe 
to their elevation a perpetual spring s . 33 

On the other side, on the contrary, a cloudy sky , a much less 
fertile soil, and obstacles of all kinds, oppose the establishment of 
colonists. It is acknowledged that the natural advantages of a 
country give a i^ight to expect from the inhabitants a more rapid 
and higher civilization. The greater the fertility of a soil, the 
more guilty are the people who neglect it; as the original sterility 
of a land afterwards covered with abundant harvests bears witness 
to the skill of the people who cultivated it. If then, with a fine 
climate, and in the most advantageous circumstances, we find a 
people ignorant, lazy, miserable, and immoral, our conclusions 
against the actuating principle of their conduct would be singularly 

1. Dp Toequeville, vol. u, p. XW. — 2. Rougemoat, p. 679. — 3. D'Orbiguv, vol. i, p. 
— -i. Malte-Brun, vol. ix. u. 681. — 5. Balbi, p. 944 . 

2 



18 



strengthened. — Bnt let us enter upon our subject : the comparison 
of the United States of North America, with the several Republics 
of the South. 

We have said that the United States are protestant, the South , 
catholic : before we describe their present condition, let us relate 
their origin, and begin with the Anglo-Americans. 

" The emigrants who came to settle on the shores of New Eng- 
land all belonged to the middle classes in the mother-country. 
Their assemblage on American ground presented , from the begin- 
ning, the singular phenomenon of a society where there were 
neither great lords nor common people, neither rich nor poor. 
There was proportionately a greater mass of misery amongst 
them than in the midst of any European nation in these days l . " 

" The emigrants, or as they called themselves so well, the pil- 
grims, belonged to that sect in England, which, on account of the 
austerity of its principles, was called Puritan. 

"When scarcely disembarked upon this inhospitable shore, which 
Nathaniel Morton has described, the first occupation of the emi- 
grants was to organise themselves into a society. They passed im- 
mediately an act which read thus : " We, the undersigned, who, 
for the glory of God, the advancement of the christian faith, and 
honour of our king and country, have undertaken to plant the first 
colony in these distant regions; we do, by these presents, solemnly 
and mutually, in the presence of God and of each other, covenant 
and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for the 
better ordering and preservation and furtherance of our designs : 
by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and 
equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices from time 
to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the ge- 
neral good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submis- 
sion and obedience 2 . ** 

" The legislators in this body of penal laws are above all anxious 
to maintain good morals and virtuous conduct; for which reason 
they penetrate continually into the domain of conscience, and there 
is scarcely a sin which they do not succeed in placing under the 
control of (he magistrate 3 . " 

"What distinguished these emigrants from all others," says 
Malte-Brun, "was the object of their enterprise. It was not po- 
verty that forced them to abandon their country; they left behind 
them a respectable place in society, and sure means of existence. 



i DeToe<?uevMe, vol. r, pp. 23, 24. — 2. Vol. I, pp. 28 et 29. — 3. Vol. i, p. 34. 



lit 



Neither did they pass into the New World to better their condition, 
or to augment their fortune; they tore themselves from all the de- 
lights of their native land to satisfy a purely intellectual desire, 
and exposed themselves to the miseries of exile in order to obtain 
the triumph of an idea l . " 
Now let us consult Michel Chevalier : 

" The Anglo-Americans, who quitted Europe the last, that is to 
say, after the Spaniards had established their domination in South- 
ern and Central America, did not leave the Old World until it had 
been completely ploughed up by the intellectual revolution of 
which Luther was the Mirabeau, and Henry the Eighth in England 
the Robespierre and the Napoleon. This great event had already 
deposited in the human mind a germ, which succeeding ages were 
destined to see flourish. England was already pregnant with these 
habits of labour, method, and legality, which were to make her the 
first commercial and political nation in the Old World; they 
the refore started with the principles which were to insure their 
political and commercial supremacy in the New 2 . " 

Such is the origin of the United States of North America. We 
shall not follow the different phases of the history of this people; it 
does not enter into our subject : all we have to do, after having 
described their starting point, is to show the end attained. And 
here again we shall allow eye-witnesses to speak : 

"The United States is the greatest nation of the New World. 
Their mercantile navy is only surpassed by that of England; their 
public works, their canals, their scientific and literary establish- 
ments rival those of Europe. The population, already considerable 
in itself, is still more so when we compare it with that of the 
other States of America, over which it exercises a twofold in- 
fluence by its mass and by the enterprising activity of its govern- 
ment. In short, the. United States are at the head of that civiliza- 
tion which is advancing so rapidly from one end to the other of 
this part of the World. 

" It is difficult to form a just idea of the extraordinary progress 
of the population of the Union, the prodigious developement of 
agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, the foundation of fresh 
towns, the opening of new canals, and formation of new roads. 
Villages, and even simple hamlets, become in a few months great 
and opulent cities by the construction of a railroad, by the opening 
of a canal, or by the working of a new mine 3 . n 



1. Be Tocqueville, vol. xi, p. 2-22. — 2. Vol. i, pp. 374, 375.-3. Balbi, introd., pp. 63 et 64. 



20 



" No where, in America, can the philosopher contemplate a more 
imposing spectacle than that which is ottered him hy the Anglo- 
American Confederation; it is truly a phenomenon, hitherto without 
example in the history of nations. Great and flourishing from her 
very infancy, this powerful Confederation is a demonstration of 
what maybe effected by liberty sustained by wise institutions, the 
spirit of concord, the love of one's country, respect for the laws and 
religion, activity and persevering labour, With a political exist- 
ence of scarcely half a century, her immense shores are studded 
with rich and populous cities, her primeval forests are exchanged 
for a well cultivated country, ornamented by the richest gifts 
of nature, and enriched by numerous manufactories. Sumptuous 
edifices, magnificent churches, elegant houses, superb squares, ca- 
nals and railroads of extraordinary length, immense stores, nume- 
rous dock- yards, workshops of every description, take the place of 
the miserable huts of the former inhabitants ; and thousands of ves- 
sels, laden with the manufactures of the most industrious nations, 
with the productions of every climate, plough the waters of her ri- 
vers, which in olden time only drifted the shapeless canoe of the 
savage. It is impossible sufficiently to admire the rapid progress 
which every year marks the existence of this new Europe, rich in 
all the knowledge and activity of the Old World, which she even 
appears ready to outvie." Without distant colonies, it has deve- 
loped to an immense extent its commercial shipping : inferior only 
to that of England, and already superior to that of all the other 
nations of the globe. Never have similar wonders been wrought in 
so short a time, even by the most powerful monarchies, and after 
many glorious reigns. Civilization now flourishes where formerly 
all was barbarous; the authority of wise laws has been substituted 
for the violence of brutal force ; numerous philanthropic al institu- 
tions, and the consolations of a religion of peace, relieve and com- 
fort mankind, on the same spots where so much w r as suffered from 
the barbarity and superstition of the ancient inhabitants l . " 

" Here is a real moving picture, a scene of perpetual action. * 
without a moment of rest : towns and whole Republics rise up 
more rapidly than an edifice in Europe . New England is the centre 
of commercial and maritime enterprise, and the seat of the most 
generally diffused civilization : the people, well informed and labo- 
rious, know how to appreciate and defend their political rights. 
Gloomy presbyterianism shows its influence solely in the austerity 

1. Balbi, pp. 975, 976 



of morals and in the respect lor public worship, which are charac- 
teristic marks of the inhabitants of New England i . " 

Lastly, we will quote a modern author : 

" At this time, the Republic of the United States, whose origin is 
so recent, has not its equal in power in the New World, or in the 
Old. Amid the old powders of Europe she already occupies a fore- 
most place. Prodigious progress ! which may be justly considered 
as the wonder of modern ages. Other nations perhaps have started 
from a lower state of existence, and arrived at the summit of power, 
the Romans for example ; but it must be remarked that their ele- 
vation was the slow and gradual work of ages, whilst the Ame- 
rican Republic has increased her population fivefold, tripled her 
territory, and increased at least tenfold her power of production 
in half a century; and this without an army, without war, without 
conquest; thanks alone to the gradual and pacific developement of 
her natural resources, fructified by labour. Raynal wrote in 1781 : 
If ten millions of men ever find an assured subsistence in these pro- 
vinces, it will be a great deal. In less than forty years the ever 
of Raynal had arrived ; and now r , that is to say, sixty-five years after, 
the ten millions that he stated as the extreme limit of what was 
possible are more than doubled. What is more, this progression 
perserves its astonishing rapidity, and promises not only tens, 
but hundreds of millions. The result has thus baffled all foresight, 
and surpassed all expectation 2 . " 

To this sketch of Protestant America in the North, what has Ca- 
tholic America in the South to oppose? This is the statement of 
Roman Catholic authors : 

" In the Republics of South America, which preserve the blood 
and the indolent pride of the Spaniards, constitutions are destroyed 
hourly by the will of some dictator ; and the people , after a transient 
appearance in the career of civilization, fall back into the darkness 
of barbarism, and are not even conscious that they have been free for 
a day. Society, in short, stumbles at the first step it attempts to 
take forward, and falls helpless at the entrance of that path in which 
modern civilization springs forward, radiant and proud, to the 
goal. All that is a grievous assemblage of ignorance, disorder, 
and misery 3 . " 

" In the countries occupied by the descendants of the European 
colonists, public education is very defective, and private education, 
in general, neglected. Agriculture, except in some few localities, is 



1. Malte-Bnill, vol. XI, pp.210, 211. — 2 Revile Britannique , 1848, July and Angiist. — 
:i. January and February, p. 244. 



in a deplorable state ; as to manufactures, they are in their infancy. 
The natural feelings are on a level with such an education. Scarce- 
ly is an individual attacked with leprosy, than he is torn from his 
family, and thrown into a special hospital ; and there, deprived of 
all external communication, and abandoned to the brutality of an 
impatient mercenary, the unhappy being sees himself lost without 
resource, and gives himself up to despair; the disease increases , 
and he falls a victim to the ignorance and prejudices of his coun- 
trymen. 

" In the Cundinamarca exists the barbarous custom of travelling 
on the back of a man, as elsewhere on the back of a mule. The 
unhappy Gargueros, lightly clothed, and armed with a long stick, 
travel during several successive days across a stony and rugged 
country, carrying a load on their shoulders which weighs abont 
two hundred pounds. Two straps round the shoulders support 
a chair on which the traveller is seated, and when he finds that his 
steed does not go fast enough, that his foot is not sure, or his trot 
gentle enough, he does not hesitate to strike him with his riding 
whip, or to run his spurs into his sides *. " 

Leaving the country, let us turn to a large city, and cast a glance 
at Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil : 

" Here the use of cemeteries is not yet prevalent. There hap- 
pens what used to take place in the charnel houses of our great ci- 
ties. Fresh funerals are continually throwing up bones, which are 
not always treated with the respect due to the dead. Sometimes, " 
as M. Walsh says, " the soil has been so often turned up, that it is 
impossible to find a fresh spot of earth deep enough to contain the 
dead body, which necessarily remains above the level of the soil, 
and the gravedigger is obliged to use an instrument like that 
employed by our paviers to make it enter into its grave. The 
spectators look on with the most perfect indifference 2 . " 

" In order to give a complete idea of the strange system which 
had been adopted by the mother-country with regard to the Por- 
tuguese colonies, we may mention the fact that, about the 
year 1800, a cotton spinning manufactory having been established 
near Bahia, ii was destroyed by order of the governor, and the pro- 
prietor was sent to Europe to be j udged according to the laws which 
forbad the introduction of manufactures 3 . 

If any one wishes to know what the Argentines were doing while 
the Anglo-Americans were laying down railroads, they have only to 



■ 1. Union piltoresque, Colombie , p. 21. — 2. Idem, p. 139. — 3. From Warden, Chronologic 
Uistoriquede I'Arnerique, vol. XIII, p. 109. 



read : " In the Argentine Republic, " says d'Orbigny, instead oi 
making new roads, and opening fresh communications in the midst 
of the wilds, the Europeans neglect those that have been in their 
possession forages, and, to 1he shame of civilization be it spoken, 
they are driven back to the gates of their cities *. " 

" In town and country, all persons who are not of a certain rank 
in society go barefoot. Shoes have only lately been introduced, and 
it is not at all uncommon to see a woman shoeless, who is other- 
wise well dressed. The use of stockings is still less common, be- 
cause they cost more 2 . " 

" The children go completely naked in the house until they are 
six or eight years old; and when they go out, scarcely a simple 
cotton shift is thrown about them , so that they always remain 
strangers to modesty. " 

" At Lesquina commences a change of manners. I found no 
longer the frank hospitality of the North; but that insolence and 
hatred of strangers which is met with in the province of Entre-Rios, 
which 1 was going to enter 3 . " 

u Caballa-Matia is a group of a few poor huts, where live suspi- 
cious and uncommunicative men, with faces as ferocious as those of 
the jaguars, their neighbours \ " 

ee The inhabitants of Bajada dislike agriculture, and none of their 
houses are ornamented with gardens; they never plant a tree : on 
the contrary, they cut down all they can find, so that the country 
appears as if it had been ravaged by a general conflagration 5 . *' 

(( When I traversed the forest of the Conception, my enterprise 
appeared very bold; but my guide confessed that he was in commu- 
nication with the brigands who were concealed there, and that 
with the help of some presents, with which he was always provided, 
he had no fear of being ill treated 6 . " 

" A great number of the inhabitants (Pampas), instead of accept- 
ing any improvement in their condition, persist in their filthiness 
and rudeness, regarding it as a point of personal pride not to re- 
nounce habits which they consider as indispensable, and withdraw- 
ing from circulation enormous sums, which they hoaid to the great 
prejudice of the country; boasting of their occupation as the most 
useful in the world, of their violent exercises as the most noble, and 
despising supremely ad kinds of science, education, and politeLessV 

" The bad state of the roads has long been ike chief obstacle to 
the extension of commerce, and this state of things is maintained by 



1. D'Orbigny, vol. r, p. 313. — 2. Idem, p. 384. — 3. Idem, p. 413. — 4. hhm, p. 421. — 
5. Idem, p. 427. — 6. Idem, p. 431 — 7. Idem, p. 627. 



24 



the civil and religious authorities, in order to preserve the exclu- 
sive monopoly of the exchanges. Miry roads are covered with 
trunks of trees , across which the poor mule makes its way, at the 
risk of breaking a leg, or sinking up to the breast 1 . " 

(C The commerce of the province (Gorrientes) is insignificant; 
and it is forbidden to let any money go out of it. To exercise any 
kind of trade is a dishonour to a man of condition, so that there are 
neither artisans, nor manufacturers, except among the Indians, the 
mulattoes, or the women. The whites must not do any thing V 

"It is singular to see men, who would blush to employ them- 
selves in any manual labour, think it quite natural that their wives 
should do so : it would be easy to establish manufactories, as labour 
is cheap. When will civilization, and the spirit of industry, be 
sufficiently advanced among the Corrientinos to turn to account the 
riches which only require to be made use of? 3 " 

" The upper classes are proud and conceited; their siesta is very 
long, and they only devote to business the time that is not given to 
smoking ; talking of politics sometimes, but more usually of horses 
and cattle, and still oftener of scandalous adventures and women. 
In fact their occupation consists in doing nothing 4 . " 

" Felling trees, their transport, the loading of boats, etc., would 
be labours incompatible with the indolence of the proud Entre- 
Rianos, who, although these occupations are very lucrative, regard 
them as beneath them; the little labour which the occupation of 
shepherd exacts suits them much better than any kind of in- 
dustry 5 . " 

" Little is done at Santa-Cruz : the chief employment consists in 
visits and festivals. Literature is scarcely known : the men read 
little, and the women not at all. xMen and women go bare- 
footed 6 . " 

The Pampas willingly lend to each other their wives, who indeed 
abandon themselves to all their relations. At the approach ot 
death they meet together, and shut the eyes , mouth, and nostrils 
of the dying person, in order, they say, that death may not pass 
from his body into that of the other inhabitants of the house. It 
thus often happens that these savages, taking a fainting fit for death, 
hasten by suffocation the last moments of their relations 7 . " 

Is the contrast that we have placed before the eyes of our readers 
the fruit of our imagination ? Does it result from a choice of quota- 
tions, which other quotations would contradict ? Are we the only 

1 D'Ol'big'llW vol. I, pp. 3S0. 391. — 2. Idem, p. 351. 3. Idem, p. 352. — h. Idem, p. 369. 
— 3, Idem, p. 138, —6, Mem, vol. II. p. 571. — 7. Idem.-, vol. Ill, [i. 98. 



persons struck by this contrast? No, our author remarks it him- 
self: " When one sees North America traversed in every direction 
by numerous steamboats and railroads, one is astonished that the 
nations who have colonised South America should have remained 
so far behind, without ever taking the first steps towards progress L . " 

Michel Chevalier pronounces a similar judgment : "■ The Anglo- 
American people will lay the foundation of a race, although it is pos- 
sible that the type that now predominates may be eclipsed by 
another ; whilst the Hispano-Americans will leave no posterity, 
unless, by one of those inundations called conquests, a Hood of 
more generous blood from the North or East comes to fill their 
impoverished veins 2 . " 

To render the parallel exact and conclusive between the two he- 
mispheres, it is not necessary to oppose to the mechanic and farmer 
of the United States their counterpart in the nations of German 
origin, idiom, and religion * it is only necessary to open one's eyes 
to recognise that the mass of the population of the French, Spa- 
niards, and Italians, are far from having attained each in his own 
way the degree of perfection to which the masses in North Ame- 
rica have advanced in their own peculiar direction 3 . " 

" If the United States were to snatch the Mexican provinces from 
the Spanish race, they would be responsible to mankind and to God 
for the consequences of a theft ; but if the countries of which they 
had taken possession prospered in their hands, posterity would 
pardon their having seized them. On the contrary, it would pro- 
nounce a severe judgment on the Mexicans, who, with such neigh- 
bours near at hand , should remain as they are at present in a state 
of base inactivity and stupid security • and on the European powers, 
if they had neglected to warn and help them to shake off their le- 
thargy \ " 

Lastly, M. de Tocqueville expresses himself in the same terms : 
" Democratical institutions, "says he, " only prosper in the United 
States. The American Union has no enemies to struggle against : 
she is alone in the midst of the Ocean. Nature had isolated in a 
like manner the Spaniards of South America, but this did not pre- 
vent their keeping up an army : and when they had no strangers 
to fight against, they turned their arms against each other. The 
Anglo-American democracy is the only one that has been able to 
remain at peace. The territory of the Union presents a boundless 
field for human activity, and inexhaustible materials for labour and 

1. D'Oibigny, vol. m, p. 113, — 2. Michel Chevalier , p. 373. — 3. Hm, pp. 385, 386, — 
4. Mm, pp. 387., 388. 



II 

industry. Then, the love of wealth takes the place of ambition, 
and a life of comfort subdues the fierceness of party spirit. But in 
what part of the world are there more fertile wastes , more magni- 
ficent rivers, more inexhaustible riches to be met with, 1han in 
South America? And yet South America cannot bear a democracy. 
Were it sufficient for the happiness of a people to be placed in a 
corner of the universe where they could spread themselves as ihey 
pleased over uninhabited lands, the Spaniards of South America 
would have no reason to complain of their lot. 

And even if they could not enjoy the same happiness as the in- 
habitants of the United States, they might, at least, excite the envy 
of European nations. Yet there are no nations upon the face of 
the earth so miserable as those of South America " 

The scale of morals is not more elevattd than that of civiliza- 
tion : " The Spaniards let loose their dogs upon the Indians as if 
they were wild beasts; they pillaged the New World like a town 
taken by storm , without discernment and without pity, but all 
could not be destroyed, fury must needs wear itself out : and 
the rest of the Indian population, which had escaped the massacre, 
ended by mixing with the conquerors, and by adopting their lan- 
guage and customs. 

" On the contrary, the conduct of the Americans cf the United 
States towards the natives breathes the purest love of forms and 
legality. Provided that the Indians remain in their savage state, 
the Americans do not interfere in their affairs in any way, but treat 
them as independent nations; and they will not occupy their lands 
without having duly acquired them by contract. 

" The Spaniards, in spite of unexampled barbarities, which have 
covered them with lasting shame, have not succeeded in extermi- 
nating the Indian race, nor even in hindering their sharing their 
rights. The Americans of the United States have attained this 
double result with a wonderful facility; quietly, legally, philan- 
thropically, without bloodshed, without violating any of the great 
principles of morality in the eyes of the world 2 . " 

To convince you that the difference of these two nations consists 
in men, and not in things, suppose that they have the same insti- 
tutions, the same contract will still exist. Facts have realised this 
supposition. " Mexico, " saysiM. de Tocqueville, "which is as hap- 
pily situated as the Anglo-American Union, has chosen the same 
laws, and yet cannot get accustomed to a democratical government. 



1. I>e Tocqiievilie, vol. II, pp. 230, 253, — 2. Idem, p. 311. 



There must then be, independent of physical causes and laws, some- 
thing which enables democracy to govern the United States ! . *' 

We have already hinted that the civilization of the United States 
was a fruit of the Protestant faith. Without any fresh demonstra- 
tion, we might now conclude that the Catholic faith is the source 
from which flows the state of things we have been considering in 
South America. But, in the room of this simple deduction, we 
prefer placing the eloquent testimony of a writer, who explains, as 
we do, the difference of these two civilizations by the difference of 
the two religious principles which has inspired them. Let us listen 
then to M. Edgard Quinet : 

" In order to appreciate the struggle between modern Catholi- 
cism and Protestantism, we must leave Europe. Here they are 
both embarrassed in their movements by too many old establish- 
ments and customs. Providence has placed them in a vast arena, 
where each Jieing surrounded solely by its own deeds will be judg- 
ed by them alone. The Church of the Middle Ages and the Re- 
formation have, each in America, a world in which to try their 
strength at ease. A duel which has Heaven and Earth for wit- 
nesses ! A few men land, one by one, on the shores of North Ame- 
rica, poor, humble, and unknown* they bring with them but one 
book, the Bible; they open it on the strand, and begin immediately 
to build up the new city on the plan of the book recovered by- 
Luther 2 . " 

" See the calmness and boldness of these men ! We discover, in 
the constitution of this rising empire , the fire of Luther united to 
the coolness of Calvin. What intrepidity, to rush into this vi- 
sible infinity, to push back the barriers, to tame the hydra of the 
forests ! Herculean labour, performed by a christian mind ! sacred 
work of man to bend a whole hemisphere to his will! An empire 
bows to labour a new universe for its field; its instruments are 
rivers; Christ again becomes the carpenter. 

ee Hearken to the sound of his axe; he fells the primeval oak m 
the virgin forests; the sweat inundates his brow. To all appear- 
ance his thoughts are concentrated in his rule and compass. He 
builds, with toil and trouble, an unknown hut near a running 
stream, The traveller scarce deigns to turn his head towards this 
humble dwelling, where the noise of the axe and hammer mingles 
with the chant of a psalm. But if, a few years later, he pass 
again by the same spot, he sees, by a sort of social miracle, in the 



1. De Tocqueviile, vol. n, pp. 250, 255. — 2. Quinet, p. 291. 



28 

place of the hut, a mighty empire rising from the earth, the 
Carpenter has become the teacher of the world K " 

u In this immense arena the lists are opened between two reli- 
gions; the Catholicism of the Council of Trent has received, for the 
display of her strength, South America. There the founders are 
not isolated individuals; on the contrary, according to Catholic prin- 
ciples, an association already formed, a powerful empire, with all 
its resources, comes to take possession of the soil . Spain established 
herself in America with her Church, her authority, and her armies; 
and enhancing the value of her portion, on one side the nation 
that takes its place on this scene is the right arm of Catholicism, 
and, on the other, the country that is assigned to it. is the most 
visibly favoured by the Creator. Rich valleys and fertile plains 
seem to demand the living energy which would give birth to new 
empires. In order that the trial may be more decisive, Catholicism 
alone is allowed to approach these shores; the civilization of the 
natives, which might have embarrassed her actions, disappears. 
Nothing remains but mighty nature, who, in her solitude, invites 
man to crown her with vast ideas, projects, innovations, societies, 
kingdoms, gigantic as herself. But man remains motionless, bound 
by an invisible force. 

" His mind neither rises nor expands in this mould newly open- 
ed to receive it. Three ages pass away; all Avithers around him. 
In the midst of primeval forests, not one new thought buds out in 
the form of institution, an enterprise, or even a book. The morn- 
ing breeze of the universe fans the brow , but cannot give new life 
to decrepitude. What are these infant empires, Mexico , Rio-Ja- 
neiro, Buenos-Ayres, Lima, that have in the first days of their 
existence the wrinkles of Byzantium? Chili alone seems yet to pre- 
serve the spirit of the ancient Araucans in the poem of Ercilla. 

" What means this wondrous sterility in a New World, except 
that the idea brought thither had given elsewhere all its fruit ; that 
Catholicism, essentially conservative during three ages, has lost the 
power of impulse, the creative spirit; that she is incapable hence- 
forth of giving to the wide expanse the word alone pregnant of a 
new social world; that her soul, imprisoned in the cathedrals of 
the mediaeval ages, has no longer the strength of divine tempests to 
purify chaos and baptise continents ~. " 

" Let these nations of the South do what they will, they end ine- 
vitably by realising in their government the ideal which they have 



1. Qu'iBCt, p. 24>3. — 2. Idem. p. 293, 



29 



inscribed in their state religion, that is, absolute power. All they 
can do is to change dictators : and thus we see republic succeed in 
nothing but in tightening the bands of their thraldom . Progressive 
punishment ! South America lies as it were at the foot of a vast upas 
tree, ever distilling its torpor, while the trunk, rooted in another 
Continent, remains invisible *. " 

Until now we have only considered the two states of society from 
afar, and in a general way; let us now draw nearer, and study them 
in detail ; and first let us examine the religious principles which 
inspire them : 

Religion. — "It is religion, " says M. de Tocqueville, " that has 
given rise to the Anglo-American communities. In the United 
States, religion is blended with the national customs, and with all 
those feelings that one's native land inspires; this gives it a special 
influence. In this country, religion, it may be said, has fixed her 
own limits; religious order here remains entirely distinct from 
political order; so much so, that it has been easy to change the old 
laws, without unsettling the old systems of faith. Christianity has 
retained a great ascendancy over the mind. 

In the United States, Christian sects are infinitely varied, and 
undergo continual modifications ; but Christianity itself is an esta- 
blished and undeniable fact. 

The revolutionists of America are obliged to profess a certain 
respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not permit 
them easily to violate the laws , even when these are opposed to the 
carrying out of their designs; and, if they could surmount their 
own scruples, they would still feel themselves checked by those of 
their partisans. Hitherto, no one m the United States has dared to 
advance the maxim, that everything is allowable for the interest 
of society : an impious maxim, which appears to have been in- 
vented in an age of freedom, in order to justify all future tyrants ! 
Thus, while the law permits the American people to do every thing, 
religion hinders them from conceiving everything, and prohibits 
them from daring everything. Religion, which, among the Ame- 
ricans, never directly interferes with the government of society, 
should be regarded as the first of their political institutions, which 
singularly promotes the exercise of liberty. It is also in this point 
of view that the people of the United States themselves regard 
religious convictions. 

" When a political man attacks a sect there, it is not a reason 



L. Quinei, p. 298. 



30 



for the members of that sect to refuse to support him; but, if he 
attacks all the sects together, all men desert him , and he remains 
alone. " 

But what spirit animates this religion, so generally diffused in 
the United States? A spirit of light and liberty : " The Ameri- 
cans, " as the same author tells us, blend so completely in their 
minds the idea of Christianity with that of liberty, that it is 
nearly impossible to bring them to conceive the existence of the 
one apart from the other; and this is not, among them , one of 
those barren convictions that the past bequeaths to the present, 
and which appears less to live than to vegetate in the bottom of 
the soul 1 ." 

"There are European populations whose infidelity is only equalled 
by their depravity and ignorance; whilst in America we see one 
of the most free and enlightened nations in the world cheerfully 
fulfilling ali the outward duties of religion. On my arrival in the 
United States, it was the religious aspect of the country which first 
attracted my attention. By degrees, as I prolonged my stay, I 
perceived the great political results of these facts, so new to me. 
Among ourselves I had seen the spirit of liberty almost always 
move in opposite directions. Here I found them closely con- 
nected \ " 

According to the authors quoted, religion is the source of all the 
civilization of the United States. But what religion? Protestant- 
ism; M. Quinet tells us so : " The protestant principle is realized 
there with a manifest result; and it is surprising that many writers 
amongst us, who have treated of American democracy, have only 
seen in these institutions the vague influence of religiou in ge- 
neral. These institutions bear the exclusive stamp of the Refor- 
mation; for each one of their founders turned aside from the 
resort of men into the depths of the forests; he was there, so to 
speak, king of the world; there was no appeal in the physical and 
moral universe but to himself. Nature and the Bible encompassed 
him. In this immensity, he was himself a church ; uniting in 
himself the offices of priest, king, and artizan, he baptised his 
children, he celebrated their marriage. By slow degrees, other 
sovereigns like himself found themselves almost unconsciously 
touching his boundaries; intervals were filled up; the cabin be- 
came a village , the village a town. A community was formed 
without the individual ceding any of his power; and this spectacle 

t. Tocqueville, p. 226. — 2. idem, vol. n, p. 229. 



Si 

is unique. The Gospel, open everywhere , was the primitive con- 
tract which made these solitary men the citizens of a republic of 
equals " 

Such are the religious principles of ths United States : what are 
those of South America? Let us examine. 

M. d'Orbigny, whom we have already quoted, is a man of learn- 
ing, sent by the French government on a scientific expedition to 
South America; he passed several years in travelling over these 
countries, he is therefore well acquainted with them. In describ- 
ing the climate, plants, mines, etc., he often expresses his opi- 
nion of the inhabitants. As the naturalist, when writing, could 
have had no idea of the use that we should make of his re- 
ports, his testimony is so much the more valuable to us. He thus 
expresses himself on the religion of the Brazilians : u What a sin- 
gular contrast ! What outward religion, and what corruption in 
grain! The conscience of the inhabitants of Corrientes must be 
unscrupulous indeed, or they must have a religion for themselves 
altogether different from the true one; a religion teaching the 
Spanish belief, that confession effaces all sins 2 . " " Notwithstan- 
ding the dissipated lives led by both sexes at Corrientes, they never 
neglect going to mass on Sundays and festivals 3 ; they offer num- 
berless prayers, and are continually asking for blessings ; these are 
remains of the system of education established by the Jesuits in 
their missions. But, if we consider their religious belief in its true 
point of view, we shall see that for the inhabitants of these pro- 
vinces religion is rather a matter of habit than of conviction ; 
for it does not hinder ihem from indulging, when they are young, 
in all kinds of excesses, without much fear of future punishment, 
notwithstanding the bloody spectacles of the Holy Week, and the 
awful penances to which the aged men and women submit 
themselves *. * 

" The most bloody representations of the Passion are exhibited 
in the churches during Passion week : all there breathes horror. 
It is then that faults are expiated; if indeed the superstitious acts 
of an exaggerated worship have ever borne the characteristic marks 
of real repentance 5 . " 

" Women sometimes die from the effects of their penances. 
Some may feel justly astonished at seeing so much austerity allied 
to such laxity of morals, but I have always met the one accompa- 
nying the other. The ministers of religion would undoubtedly 



I. Quinet, p. 291. — 2. D'Orbigny, vol. I. pp. 377, 378. 379. — 3, idem, p. 387. — 4, 
p. 388. — 5. Idem, 395. 



32 



obtain more advantageous results by preaching sound morality, 
and supporting it by the example of a pure and spotless life 1 . 

"The Spaniards, in general, exaggerate everything relating to 
the externals of religion. Thus it is difficult to recognize a likeness 
to anything human under the wounds and blood with which the 
statues are covered. Perhaps I was ill-disposed, but this frightful 
spectacle filled me with horror, and I could share but slightly in 
the enthusiasm with which the priest extolled each of these groups 
to me, repeating, in every possible form, that true religion existed 
nowhere but in Moxos. After vespers, a troop of Italians, dressed in 
a burlesque manner in red and other glaring colours, and perform- 
ing the characters of Jews, went slowly over the mission search- 
ing for Jesus Christ. The melancholy sounds of the drums, half 
unstrung, and the plaintive notes of the flutes, produced upon me an 
effect that I cannot describe; my whole nervous system seemed 
shaken. The priest told me that the drums represented the noise 
of the populace enraged against Jesus Christ; the flutes counterfeited 
cries ; and the calabashes imitated the earthquake 2 . " 

At Christmas, I was spectator at Chuquisaca of a singular cus- 
tom. All the ladies decorate altars, where are exposed images of 
the child Jesus surrounded by playthings. In order to see these 
altars, every one visits the ladies, who rival each other in luxury. 
On these occasions, it is the custom to play practical jokes. You 
are invited, for example, to take some whipped cream; instead of 
which you find cotton : this excites the hilarity of the bystanders 3 . " 

More than ten different bands grotesquely dressed danced before 
the Holy Sacrament at Tiaguanaco, as well as at La Paz; and, in the 
evening, they did as much around the square. Going from chapel 
to chapel, the music, executed without any attempt at harmony, 
produced a most extraordinary cacophony. Afterwards I called 
down vengeance upon the authors of these dances ; for two nights 
running they never ceased to go about the streets, executing 
their wild concert *. " 

" At Corrientes, during Passion Week, I had the opportunity 
of observing the remains of the fanatical rites which seem to have 
presided in this country since the first dawning of civilization . But, 
as I had been warned that this excess of outward devotion gene- 
rally concealed a great amount of depravity, I silently quitted the 
wretched scene of this religious parody, pained at seeing the profana- 
tion of the mysteries of a religion, which is always respected when 

1. D'OrMgHy, vol. I, j». 396. — 2. Idem, vol. HI, pj). 134, 133. — 3. Idem p. -282. — 4. Idem, 
p. 348. 



33 



its ministers know how to render it respectable, by respecting 
themselves \ " I saw practised there the velario, a custom which 
seems to unite the fanaticism of the first ages of Christianity 
with the barbarism of the savage state. Strangers and relations for 
two leagues round assemble in the house where a child has died , 
dance the cieleto , drink brandy, smoke, and indulge in foolish 
merriment. They afterwards go to bury the body, accompanied 
by a fiddle, at least. In order to multiply these festivals ( a mon- 
strous mixture of superstition and debauchery, which violates the 
rights of humanity , and effaces or perverts the sentiments of 
nature !) they even go so far as to borrow the body of a child, which 
often passes from house to house until it is putrefied 2 . " 

To complete this picture of the state of religion in South Ame- 
rica, let us give some traits of the clergy, who, in Catholicism, are 
so completely identified with religion itself. 

M. Auguste de Saint-Hilaire cannot refrain from noticing a num- 
ber of abuses which may be observed in the clergy of the country 
of Minas (Brazil). " The stipend of the priests being insufficient 
since the suppression of tithes, an arrangement known by the name 
of the Constitution of Bahia grants to the priests forty reis (two- 
pence-halfpenny ) , for each proprietor and his wife; and twenty 
reis (a penny far thing), for each slave. This contribution had been 
voluntary; but the clergy soon advanced other claims, and on 
pretence of being indemnified for the Easter confession, which 
European catholics will happily have some difficulty in believing, 
the priests succeeded in introducing the custom of being paid three 
hundred reis ( one shilling and sevenpence halfpenny ) by each 
communicant. Priests have been seen (one hardly dares to say 
so), who, at the moment of giving the communion at Easter, have 
interrupted the solemn act to demand of the poor the accustomed gra- 
tuity. It is, without doubt, in this way that certain benefices pro- 
duce as much as nine thousand cruzados. " The author points out, 
with a moderation which gives additional authority to his words, 
the monstrous abuses which, as he proves, are opposed to the 
prosperity of the country. 

" Confession, " he continues, " is, of all the sacerdotal functions, 
that which takes up most of the priest's time, and I have seen five 
negroes despatched in a quarter of an hour. If the ecclesiastics 
read their breviary, it must be very secretly; for I never but once 
chanced to meet one in the performance of this study. To be a 

1. D'Orbignv, vol. i, p. 123. — 2. Idem, pp. 146, 147. 

3 



34 



priest is a kind of trade , and the ecclesiastics themselves find it 
quite natural thus to consider the priesthood. 

" There have not been wanting instances of ecclesiastics devoting 
themselves to trade (literally), and even selling in a shop; at the 
same time, it is some satisfaction to know that they do not add 
hypocrisy to their other faults. They show themselves for what 
they are, and do not seek to deceive any one by grave discourses 

or an austere deportment We may add to this strange picture, 

that we ourselves have seen, in the neighbourhood of San-Salvador, 
a priest making his parishioners dance to the sound of a guitar, 
and without any person being scandalised thereby l . * 

" In order to convert the natives the more easily to the catholic 
religion, " says M. d'Orbigny, " the Jesuits and other enlightened 
ecclesiastics had introduced into the christian festivals the reli- 
gious dances of the Incas, a highly politic concession; but, subse- 
quently, these festivals were multiplied to such a degree by the 
importunities of the priests interested in maintaining them, that 
they now constitute one of the heaviest imposts by which these 
poor creatures are oppressed 2 . " 

The manner in which these ecclesiastics enter on their office is 
worthy of their ministry. " At Santa-Cruz, they celebrate a solemn 
festival on the day on which a young ecclesiastic says his first 
mass. A drum summons to the door of his relatives the persons 
invited; there are assembled the religious, civil, and military au- 
thorities. They go in procession to the church, preceded by music. 
On returning home, the young priest stands at his door, and offers 
his hand to kiss to those who present themselves. A table is 
spread with sweetmeats, wine, and liquors of every kind ; and they 
invite each other to drink 3 . " 

ec However painful it is to speak of it , I cannot pass over in 
silence the conduct of the cure of San-Juan. A deputation of native 
judges came to Santa-Ana, to declare that his connexions with the 
women of the place rendered it impossible for him to confess any 
one, as in America custom forbids an ecclesiastic to confess any of 
the relations of the women with whom the cure has been too inti- 
mate. All the native authorities unanimously deposed that the 
priest had not respected their wives any more than their daugh- 
ters. Of the nineteen Indian females, who had been the last vic- 
tims of this monster, the eldest was not more than twelve years 
eld. The examination brought horrors to light : the miserable 



1. Biesil, Univers pittoresque, pp. 352, 353, — 2. D'Orhigtiy, Vol. II, p. 421. — 3. Idem, p. 531. 



35 



wretch had made use of religion, and the fear of hell, in order to 
satisfy his passion with the most revolting cynical ness and shame- 
less libertinism. The culprit did not deny any of his acts, deeming 
them quite natural 

" The manner of living of the cures and the administrators ex- 
plains these abuses, which often occur in a lonely district of 30 or 40 
leagues, exempt from all control. 

" These two men (the cure and the administrator) share be- 
tween them unlimited power, and can satisfy all their caprices and 
fancies. 

{i Penances and excommunications on the one hand, and the 
fear of corporal punishments on the other, compel the natives to 
suffer in silence. The bad dispositions of the cures and the admi- 
nistrators (men for the most part ill-educated) are increased by 
idleness and impunity. 

The priest at Ascension, a worthy man of no capacity, was 
more busied about his temporal affairs, than with the salvation of 
the Indians S " 

f$ Among the Gnarayos I met the cure, who had been informed, 
I know not how, of what had taken place (certain pagan and 
indecent festivals had been celebrated by the neophytes in my pre- 
sence). I expected that I should, at the very least, receive some 
censures from him; but it was otherwise 5 . The priests, having 
no professional education, and being ignorant of the language of 
the country, changed nothing in the order of things at Chiquitos. 
Only, as they were far from the control of government, they worked 
the missions for their own profit. Things remained in this 
state until 1789, when Don Lazaro Bibera revealed to the audience 
of Charcas the abuses introduced by the priests, who had not only 
allowed arts and industry to languish in the province, but had 
carried on a traffic with Brazil in sacred vessels and in cattle 8 . " 

" The governors of Moxos having no right to interfere with the 
administration of the priests, there followed the greatest disturb- 
ances. The priests being only busied with their temporal affairs, 
the missions became mere shadows of what they had been. The 
greatest part of their wealth was pillaged^ the Indians lost the fruits 
of their good education ; vice flourished under the cover of idleness, 
and all the industrial arts were forgo tt-en \ " 

" At Caupolican, as on the Bolivian Table-land, the abuses in- 
troduced by the clergy, on the occasion of catholic festivals, have, 

li D'Orbigny, VOl. Ill, p. i% — 2. Idem, p. 13. — 3. Idem, vol. Ill, p. 48. — 4. Idem, p. 233; 



30 



without doubt, been the principal cause of the disorder and ruin of 
the country *. " 

" The natives of Carmen de Moxos are extremely gentle. They 
have borne for many years the infamous conduct of their admi- 
nistrator and of their priest, who, having divided the mission be- 
tween them as a common harem, caused all the young Indian girls 
to be brought to them successively, as soon as they reached eight 
or ten years of age, and that under pain of fifty lashes. The num- 
ber of the victims of these monsters, and the horrible details which 
I learnt from the interpreters themselves, make one shudder 2 . " 
"Since Don Marcelino de la Pena has been governor, the workwomen 
at Ghiquitos are no longer chastised; but at Moxos, the rapacity of 
the administrators and priests perpetuates and even multiplies the 

chastisements In this country the Indians have not a single 

day to themselves, except Sunday and festivals, which ai*e complete- 
ly devoted to religious practices. All the rest of the year they are 
worked by their administrators and priests, who do not leave them 
a moment's respite. The women are even less spared than the 

men I had never seen, under a free government, more slavery 

and despotism 3 . " 

Such are the resources, the men and things, the clergy and the 
religion, that have been employed, on both sides, to civilize the 
two Americas. Now let us see what results have been obtained 
on either hand. Let us first study the two systems of legislation, 
and seek in them the traces of the two religious creeds which 
have inspired them. 

Administration. — "It isimpossible to deny, " says M. de Tocque- 
ville, " that the legislation of the Americans, taken as a whole, 
is well adapted to the genius of the people that it governs, and to 
the nature of the country. The American laws are therefore good, 
and it is to them must be attributed a great part of the success 
which the democratic form of government ob ains in America \ " 

" The general principles upon which modern constitutions rest, 
those principles which were scarcely comprehended by most Euro- 
peans of the XVII th century, and which then partially triumphed 
in Great Britain alone, are all recognised and fixed by the laws of 
New-England : the intervention of the people in public affairs, 
the voluntary grant of taxes, the responsibility of the govern- 
ment agents, individual liberty, and trial by jury, were esta- 
blished there without discussion, and are in full activity *. " 



1. D'Orbigny, vol. in, p. 385. — 2. idem, p. 88. — 3. Idem, p. 93. — 4. Tocqueville, 
vol. II, p. 255. 



37 



Such are the laws; now for the administration : (< A strict eco- 
nomy in the management of the public funds renders a budget of 
twenty-five millions of dollars sufficient to meet all the expenses of 
the Union, and to pay off the public debt, which will soon cease 
to exist. It is with these resources, which appear so trifling in 
comparison with the population, that the Union has been able, since 
J 816, to supply her navy with roadsteads, safe and well defended 
ports, dockyards for repairing and building, and to construct a line 
of fortifications which defend all the vulnerable points of her vast 
territory 2 . " 

" The government of the United States has adopted the principle 
of allowing none but productive expenses : therefore the standing 
army consists of only seven thousand men, and the navy has only 
forty ships afloat 3 . " 

There is no country where justice is administered more leniently 
than in the United States : " North America, " says M. de Tocque- 
ville, " is, T think, the only country upon earth where, for the last 
fifty years, not a single individual has been put to death for political 
offences 4 . " 

It appears to us that one of the best criteria by which to judge of 
the excellence of apeople, is the obedience of that people to the laws. 
It is not from the legislation, mild or severe, that we can judge of 
the morals of a nation ; but a respect for the laws is a strong proof 
of its morality. Let us apply this rule to the United States of Ame- 
rica. 

u It must be acknowledged/' says M. Michel Chevalier, " to the 
honour of the English race, that it is more imbued than all others 
with the sentiment of respect for the laws. Even down to the pre- 
sent time, the Anglo-Americans in this respect, as in many others, 
have shown themselves to be English re-invigorated. There are 
nations that only comprehend the power of the law under a living 
form ; that is to say, personified in a man. They know how to obey 
a chief; but they cannot bring themselves to respect a dead letter. 
To them, the glory and prosperity of a state depend very little upon 
the excellence of the laws , but very much upon the men who are 
appointed to interpret them. In their opinion, an empire flourishes 
or decays by turns, according as the sovereign, whatever may be 
his title, is a superior or an ordinary man. This appears to be, in 
general, the character of the Asiatic nations. The Englishman is 
formed in a different mould. It costs him but little to bow before a 

1 Tocqueville, vol. i. p. 36. — 2. Malte-Brun, vol. xi, pp. 335, 336. — 3. idem, p. 339. — 
U. Tocqueville, vol. iv, p. 8 and 9. 



38 



text; but he Lows with an ill grace before a man. There is no 
necessity for his fellow-man to enjoin him to observe the laws; he 
obeys them without effort, and by instinct. In a word, the Eng- 
lishman possesses in himself the principle of self-government. 
This explains the success which this political system has obtained in 
the United States, where the English race has freely developed itself 
according to its nature K " 

" In their political existence, the mass of the American people 
have arrived at a state of initiation superior to that of the European 
mass, for they do not so much need to be governed. Every man 
here supports in himself , in a high degree, the principle of self- 
government, and is more fit to take part in public affairs 2 . " 

In the face of this legislation and administration of the protesfcant 
United States, what do we find in the catholic States of the South? 
Allow M. d'Orbigny to speak : " The volumes of laws and decrees 
that have been published in a spirit of emulation by each of these 
governments, which succeed each other with so much rapidity, have 
neither improved the administration of justice, nor better guaran- 
teed public prosperity and individual security. One might say that 
the laws are no sooner promulgated than they are forgotten, even 
by the magistrates who had proposed or discussed them, and that the 
greater part of the citizens pay no attention even to those that are 
registered in the code. It is impossible to enforce the observance 
of the most simple police regulation : the insolence of the inhabit- 
ants renders them hostile to every kind of control, and presents an 
amount of passive resistance, which could be vanquished only by 
the energy of the government 3 . $■ 

" The new regulations at Moxos prohibited all commerce, under 
the severest penalties. The Indians were more complete slaves 
than ever; instead of one absolute master (the priest), they had two 
(the priest and the administrators), whose continual quarrels and 
bad conduct caused the ruin of the missions..... The measure 
adopted by the court of Charcas was the origin of all kinds of disor- 
der, in consequence of the rivalry between the religious and secular 
authorities, and of the ignorance of the delegates of all classes. 
Govetous agents overburdened the Indians with labour for their 
own private advantage, the revenues decreased, and the province 
did but vegetate \ 

(C The greatest merit of the Spanish agents was to augment the 
revenues of the State; every measure that had this result was highly 

1. Miehel Chevalier, pp. 314, 315. — 2. Hem, p. 379. — 3. D'Orbigny, vol. i, p. 513. — 

U. Idem, vol. Ill, p. 234. 



recompensed. When the inhabitants of the missionary stations had 
been subjected to the burdens imposed on them by Don Jose Santa 
Cruz, other tribes, who were on the point of submitting, retreated 
into the depths of the forests in order to escape the annual tribute, 
and more especially the innumerable vexations and violence too 
often exercised by the agents employed in collecting if K " 

" If commerce had continued in the province of Caupolican, the 
inhabitants would certainly have progressed in civilization, against 
which their rulers are ever struggling, under the vain pretext that 
strangers would corrupt their morals 2 . But they are wanting in 
men who, laying aside personal interest, would devote themselves 
to the development of their intellectual faculties and to their moral 
education 3 . " 

if A t Bojada, there is no police at all, any more than there is jus- 
tice. The old Spanish laws, still nominally in force in the country, 

have but little authority In the evening, I kept upon my 

guard, lest I should be attacked and robbed on the quay by the rag- 
ged gauchos with their long knives and stern looks, as such attacks 
were often witnessed \ 

" The discipline of the soldiers (Pampas) is as bad as their ap- 
pearance : the recruits bring with them all the dominant vices of the 
country — the love of gaming and strong liquors, laziness, dirty 
habits, and quarrelsome dispositions, which probably costs the 
nation as many men as the wars. The punishments are corporeal, 
and very cruel ; but they are not a sufficient check to these disor- 
ders. The bad choice of the officers is another obstacle to a better 
state of things : they are generally young men, who are fit for no- 
thing else, and whose irregular conduct makes them a burden to 
their families 5 . " 

fe As soon as war breaks out in the country, they collect together 
all the criminals and vagabonds. They hastily give them a little 
drilling, equip and arm them, and the corps is formed. The pri- 
sons serve as a nursery for the soldiers of the Republic : brigands, 
guilty of numerous crimes, escape with a hundred lashes ; after 
which their irons are taken off, and they become soldiers 6 . " This 
is their first education : e i The regulation in Chalejo is, to chain 
together the soldiers on a march, like our galley slaves; after which 
they put them on a waitscoat made out of a bullock's skin, quite 
fresh, which, in drying, squeezes the upper part of the arms so 
tightly that all motion is impossible. This barbarous measure 



1. D'Orbigliy, YOl. Ill, p. 367. — 2. Idem, p. 373. — 3. Idem, p, 374. — 4. Idem, vol.. I, 
pp. 436, 437. — 5. Idem, p. 556. — 6. FOrbigny, vol. I, p. 557. 



16 



causes them to arrive half-dead with fatigue, and I have been as- 
sured that sometimes the flies lay their eggs under these leathern 
waistcoats, and the unhappy recruits, after a march of a hundred 
and twenty-five leagues, are covered with wounds, and eaten alive 
by worms l . " 

" The Indian Chiquitos, when they are attacked by epidemical 
diseases, have no one to attend or watch over them. Attacked 
by a burning fever in the epidemy of 1825, they found certain 
death by bathing in the coldest waters of the running streams. Some 
measures of precaution, taken by those whose position gives them 
the most unlimited power, would have prevented this deplorable 
result 2 . " 

The trader is no better treated than the soldier : " At Con- 
ception, the cotton is magnificent, the indigo of the best quality, 
and the neighbouring forests yield plenty of wax and vanilla : but 
the severity of the present administrator has disgusted the Indians, 
who, to avoid his exactions, fly into the woods, and return to their 
savage state. Having no wants, these Indians find themselves 
happier than at the mission; where, besides doing the government- 
work, they have to labour for the administrator and the priest, 
who do not spare them 3 . " 

The simple husbandman is no better governed than the trader. 
" During a drought of seven years' continuance, many of the inha- 
bitants of San-Jose died of hunger, through want of foresight on 
the part of the administrator... Nothing is now to be seen around 
the habitations but stunted trees, and an impoverished vegetation, 
which is constantly diminishing 4 . " 

" Some Indian families of Chiquitos, carried off from Santa-Ana, 
are treated, at Casalbasco, like transported criminals. They are 
shut up every night, escorted by soldiers when they go into the 
fields ; and when surprised in the open country, or suspected of 
wishing to escape, are chastised with rigour. Except in the towns 
of la Paz-Chnquisoca andPatos, there are nowhere medical men to 
take care of the sick poor, who are generally allowed to die for want 
of attention 5 . " 

But, if the administrators neglect those confided to them, they 
take care of themselves. Read this : " The governors of Chiqui- 
tos, in the absence of all control, worked the province for their own 
profit : their pride grew in proportion to the extent of their own 
power. They even arrogated to themselves all the pomp of ceremo- 



i. FOrbigny, vol. Il, p. 505. — 2. Idem, p. 592. — 3. Idem, p. 597. — 4. Idem, p. 625. — 
5. Idem, p. 445, 446. 1 1 



M 

nies, which, until then, had been reserved for the great solemni- 
ties of the Church. Nothing could exceed their arrogance and abso- 
lutism : reigning by terror, they satisfied their slightest caprices, 
even at the expense of morality. The Indians, men and women, 
were slaves, who, under pain of fifty lashes, could refuse nothing 
to the governor, who indulged himself in the most scandalous 
libertinism. The whole province, being considered as the farm of 
this functionary, was ground down and oppressed in every pos- 
sible way l . " 

" The administrators, in their turn, beyond the control of their 
governor, and occupied with every thing except the good of the coun- 
try, imitated their chief in his exactions. The inevitable result 
of this was a dilapidation of the revenues of the state, a general 
system of bribery, continual disputes for authority between the 
priest and the administrator, and recriminations which lowered 
both of them in the opinion of the natives ; the more so, that these 
unhappy beings, while forced to give all their time to the State, 
had still to satisfy the numberless demands of men who only 
thought of harrassing them, in order the sooner to enrich them- 
selves with the fruit of their labour. The Indians, shocked at 
first, by degrees lost their innocence, and habituated themselves to 
corruption by imitating their chief. Their religion became merely 
external, being unaccompanied by any moral sentiment. The go- 
vernment had considerably augmented their burdens, while it had 
taken from them many of their rights. The amount of labour 
exacted from them increased according to the caprice or the parti- 
cular wants of the administrators and priests. The revenues of 
the State diminishing every year, all was employed in paying the 
agents 2 . " 

" Don Gil Poledo, sent as governor to Chiquitos, endeavoured to 
establish there the old faith of the Incas, by ordering the adoration 
of the sun. Every morning, followed by his soldiers, he assem- 
bled the Indians, and compelled them, at the sound of music, 
to kneel down before the rising orb. In the evening, when 
finishing its career, he caused it to be saluted with the like cere- 
mony... 

" Before the emancipation, the Spanish governors participated 
in the worship paid to the Divinity in the churches, regarding them- 
selves as absolute kings in civil matters, and, in moral concerns, 
as equal to God. What astonishes me most, is the culpable 

1. D'Orbigny, vol. in, p. 50. — 2. Hem, p. 51. 



42 



weakness with which the clergy complied with demands of such 
a nature *. " 

We have seen how these governors treat their countrymen; let 
us see how they treat the natives : " The public revenues being no 
longer sufficient to pay the salaries of the agents, they endeavoured 
to make up the deficiency by speculations. Misery was at its 
height. The Indians, not knowing the Value of things, and it 
being the interest of their rulers to keep them in ignorance on this 
point, saw themselves made use of by the relatives of the adminis- 
trators and priests, without any bettering of their own condition 2 . 

" The Indians owe to the State the Monday, Wednesday, and 
Friday of every week. Legally, Tuesday and Saturday belong 
to them ; but, extra service being required of them, they rarely 
profit by the days which the law allows them. Compelled to 
snatch time on these days to cultivate the ground, in order to feed 
their families, they live in the greatest misery, in want of every 
thing; and this misery entails the greatest dissoluteness in their 
morals. They have always the liberty of trading with certain pri- 
vileged persons, such as the relations of the priests and adminis- 
trators; bat they are shamefully cheated, and they part with the 
produce of their labour in exchange for useless trifles 3 . " 

When we reflect on the immense advantages that the commerce 
of Chiqiritos would derive from good means of communication, 
which would enable the inhabitants \o profit by the varied produc- 
tions of the most fertile soil in the world, we are astonished that 
the government does not establish, in the interest of all, a net- 
work of interior navigation, of which the advantages would be so 
certain \ " As the administrators and priests of Moxos are entire- 
ly engrossed by their private interests, they abandon all their 
rights to the caciques, who, for the most part, do not scruple to abuse 
them. They are continually drinking chica of maize, until they 
are intoxicated, and then administer justice according to their 
caprice. They abuse to such a degree the plenty they enjoy, that 
they become immensely corpulent, and destroy their health 5 . " 

Such are respectively the laws and modes of governing of the two 
Americas. The facts speak so plainly, that it would be super- 
fluous to comment upon them : let us then proceed to another 
point of comparison. We have seen, on either hand, what light 
the two religious torches have shed, or what darkness they have 
left, among the leaders of the two nations ; let us endeavour now 



1. D'Ol'bignv , vol. II, 'p. 645. — 2. Idem, vol. Ill, p. 53. — 3, Idem, p. 58. — 4. Idem, 
p. 78. — 5. Idem, p. 95. 



fc3 



to ascertain what amount of instruction they have communicat- 
ed, or what amount of ignorance they have left, among the people 
themselves. 

It will be understood beforehand that if one of these two reli- 
gious systems challenges investigation in order to make itself 
accepted, by so. doing it invites to the study of all other subjects. 
The branches of knowledge acquired with a view to religion 
will be applicable to every thing else. If, for example, it is a prin- 
ciple that the dogmas to be believed, and morals to be practised, 
are contained in certain sacred books, it is very necessary that the 
believer should know how to read. If it is the rule that each indi- 
vidual should examine these books before he admits them as autho- 
rity, it is very necessary that he should study, more or less, what 
relates to them : history, geography, antiquities. Without doubt, 
all will not do this; but it is not the less true that such a religion 
invites all its adherents to do it, and that, by so doing, it leads the 
people to study, and to the acquisition of knowledge. 

But if the contrary should be the case; if, for instance, it should 
be a principle in a religious system that the simple believer 
should defer in every thing to the authority of his priest ; or, at 
least, that he should only examine on condition of arriving at a 
pre-determiued result, it is very evident that such a religious 
system would suppress intellect, and extinguish learning. The 
faculty of thought, no longer exercised in religion, would cease 
to be so in what is connected with it ; that is, in everything. Or, 
if there should be intellects bold enough to venture into the 
field of human knowledge, this would only be after having broken 
loose from the religious authority that sought to fetter them. 
There might then, perhaps, be learning without piety ; but, most 
probably, there would be neither the one nor the other. 

Having laid down these principles, let us compare the degrees of 
knowledge which the two religious systems have introduced into 
the Americas that are respectively subject to them. 

Knowledge. Elementary instruction is more generally diffused, 
in the United States than in any other part of the world; this is 
owing to the enlightened foresight of the first colonists ; for each time 
that a town or even a village was founded, a school was erected, a 
schoolmaster appointed, and their maintenance insured; and, ever 
since, all the legislatures have rivalled each other in their zeal to 
improve public instruction. Therefore the number of scholars, as 
compared with the population, is much greater in the United States 
than in any other country in the world. This number is 4 to 



44 



4 inhabitants; whilst in France, it is 1 to 48. It may he said 
that the American Union reaps the fruits of a system so wisely 
planned, that it was impossible it should remain unproductive. 
It is in the schools that the character of the mass of the people is 
formed; it is there that each one acquires from his infancy 
an enlightened sense of his rights and of his duties *. " 

" In 1834, the elementary schools of the state of New York were 
frequented by 544,401 public scholars : now the number of children 
between five and sixteen years of age, in the districts of which we 
have the returns, and which comprehend nearly the whole state, 
is only 543,085. The total of the expenses was 7,000,000 francs, 
of which 4,000,000 had been employed in paying the schoolmas- 
ters. In France, four years ago, the whole sum granted for ele- 
mentary instruction by the state, the departments, and the parishes 
together, was only 4,000,000 francs. Now, thanks to the efforts 
of M. Guizot, this sum has been raised to nearly twelve millions. 
But it is still only three times as much as that which is consecrated 
to the same purpose in the state of New-York, which is sixteen 
times less populous than France. The number of children who 
frequent the schools in France is 2,450,000, that is to say , a thir- 
teenth of the population, or three times less, in proportion, than in 
the state of New- York 2 . " 

" What will enable us to appreciate the degree of civilization to 
which the Anglo-American Confederation has arrived, is the deve- 
lopment of the periodical press. No European state, not even 
Great Britain, can enter into competition with her in this point of 
view. In 1828, for a population of 12 millions, there existed not 
less than 802 newspapers, without including the other periodical 
publications. In 1833, the number of the political newspapers 
amounted to 840, and that of the periodical publications to near- 
ly 400, among which sixty treated exclusively of religious sub- 
jects. The city of New York alone published 65 daily or monthly 
journals; and in the entire state there were not less than 263, 
a considerable number for a population of 1 million of inhabi- 
tants 3 . " 

" At this time the number of newspapers and periodical writ- 
ings published in the 

United States amounts to 2,800 

The circulation to 5,000,000 

The number of copies printed each year to 422,000,000 4 " 

1. Malte-Bfun, vol. xi, pp. 335, 336. — 2. Michel Chevalier pp. 292, 293. — 3. Malte-Brua, 
vol. xi. — 4. United States' Census for 1851. 



" The conquests of the human mind, of which the Reformation 
was the signal and the starting point , the great discoveries in 
sciences and industry, which in Europe are still hidden from the 
view of the greater part of the people hy a veil of ignorance and 
clouds of theories, are in North America exhibited to the eyes 
of all, and placed within the reach of all capacities; here the 
common people know how to handle and make use of them. Exa- 
mine our rustic population, study the minds of our peasants, and 
you will see that the mainspring of all their actions is a confused 
jumble of the biblical parables and the old legends of a gross su- 
perstition. Repeat the experiment on the American farmer, and 
you will find that the great traditions of the Bible are allied in his 
mind, harmoniously enough, with the precepts of modern science, 
as taught by Bacon and Descartes; with the principles of moral and 
religious independence, promulgated by Luther; and with the 
most modern ideas of political independence : he is initiated. 
With us, the great industrial and scientific machines, such as the 
steam-engine, the balloon, the voltaic pile, the lightning-conduc- 
tor, inspire the greater part of the population with a religious terror. 
In France, among a hundred peasants from the heart of our pro- 
vinces, you would not find one, who, after witnessing their effects, 
would venture to touch them; they would fear to be struck dead, 
like the sacrilegious man who touched the Ark of the Lord. On 
the contrary, for the American, they are familiar objects; he 
knows them all, at least by name ; he feels that he has a right of pos- 
session over them. To the French peasant they would be beings 
as mysterious and terrible as the fetiche for the negro, or the ma- 
nitou for the Indian. The cultivator of the far West regards them 
in the same light as a member of the French Institute — as a tool, 
an instrument of labour, or of experiments : I repeat it, he is ini- 
tiated. In the United States, there is no profanum vulgus, at least 
among the whites *. " 

" He who desires to form a judgment on the state of knowledge 
among the Anglo-Americans is, therefore, liable to see the same 
object under two different aspects. If he only fixes his attention 
on the learned, he will be astonished at the smallness of their 
number; and if he counts the ignorant, the Americans will ap- 
pear to him the most enlightened people on the face of the earth. 
The whole population is placed between these two extremes; I 
have already said so elsewhere. In New England, every citizen 



1. Michel Chevalier, p. 379. 



40 



receives the elementary notions of human knowledge, and learns, 
besides, what are the doctrines and the proofs of his religion; 
he is taught the history of his country, and the principal features 
of the Constitution which governs him. In Connecticut, it is 
very rare to find a man who has but an imperfect knowledge 
of all these things | and he who is entirely ignorant of them is in 
some sort a phenomenon!... In the states on the shores of the Gulf 
of Mexico may be found, as amongst ourselves, a certain number 
of individuals who are strangers to the elements of human know- 
ledge; but, in the United States, it would be vain to seek a single 
district still remaining buried in ignorance l : 93 

" Americans never employ the word peasant ; they cannot use 
the word, because they have no idea of what it means. The igno- 
rance of the early ages, the simplicity of the fields, the rusticity of 
the village, have not been preserved among them ; and they form 
no conception of the virtues or the vices, of the vulgar habits or the 
simple graces, of a dawning civilization. At the farthest extremity 
of the Confederate States, on the confines of society and the desert, 
there exists a population of hardy adventurers, who, to avoid the 
poverty which would have been their lot under the paternal roof, 
have not feared to penetrate into the solitudes of America, in search 
of a new country. As soon as he is arrived on the chosen spot, the 
pioneer hastily fells some trees, and builds a cabin under the re- 
maining foliage. Nothing can be more miserable than the aspect of 
these isolated dwellings. The traveller who approaches them in the 
evening sees from afar the flame in the chimney shining through 
the walls : and at night, if the flame mounts high, he hears the leafy 
roof crackle among the trees of the forest. Who would not ima- 
gine that this poor hut was the asylum of coarseness and ignorance? 
But there is no comparison to be made between the pioneer and his 
asylum. Every thing is primitive and wild around him; but he is, 
so to speak, the result of eighteen centuries of labour and expe- 
rience. He wears the garb of cities, he speaks their language ; he 
is acquainted with the past, curious as to the future, and reasons 
upon the present. He is a man highly civilized, who, for a time, 
submits to living in the woods, and penetrates into the wil- 
dernesses of the New World, with his Bible, a hatchet, and some 
newspapers. It is difficult to imagine with what rapidity thought 
circulates in these wilds : I do not believe that in the most enlight- 
ened and populous districts in France, there is so great an intel- 

i. De Tocquevihe, p. 242. 



47 



lectual movement. There can be no doubt that in the United 
States the instruction diffused among the people conduces power- 
fully to the maintenance of the democratic republic. It will be 
the same, I think, wherever the instruction that enlightens the un- 
derstanding is not separated from the education that regulates the 
morals l . " 

Such is the North, illumined by the protestant torch. Let us now 
proceed to the South, and seek for catholic enlightenment. 

" Every where, in South America, the whites have introduced 
anarchy and immorality. Every where monarchical despotism, 
or the ambition of certain intriguers, destitute of talent, has caused 
the most deplorable disorder, and obstructed the normal deve- 
lopment of nations the most highly favoured in point of intelli- 
gence. From the northern provinces of Brazil to Buenos- Ayr es ; 
from Bolivia and Peru even to the southern frontiers of Chili, no- 
thing is found but bloody struggles, continual divisions, and forced 
halts in the old ruts of barbarism and ignorance. It is not, then, 
astonishing, that the people of the South (the natives) have not yet 
been tempted to take their share in the miserable advantages of 
such a civilization 2 . " 

" The natives, who, in Mexico, form the greater number of the 
citizens, have been oppressed to such a degree, that their moral 
faculties are more degraded than those of the Indianos bravos. 
All their religion consists in going to mass and in repeating a few 
prayers. Only a short time ago there were several schools in 
which neither reading nor writing were taught, but only certain 
forms of prayers. In the country, and even near large towns, scarce- 
ly one person in two hundred could be found able to read. They 
are superstitious, bigoted, slaves to the clergy, ignorant, and poor. 
The universities and colleges inculcated the principles of servile 
obedience, political and religious ; and the people were left entire- 
ly without elementary schools. Those who wish to found schools 
meet with great obstacles in the intolerance of the clergy, sanc- 
tioned by the Congress and the states 3 . 

" The ignorance and superstition of the people (in Mexico), and 
perhaps also the absence of ail public spirit, will long render this 
country the seat of political storms, which hitherto have conti- 
nually agitated it*. " 

" After the last war, the Spaniards abandoned to the people of 
New Mexico one or two leagues of land round their villages, the 

1 De Tocqueville, pp. 242 to 246. — 2. Patagonie. U>nvers pittoreeque. — 3. Rougemont, 
pp. 735, 736. — 4. Malte-lkun, vol. XI, p. 369. 



48 



conquerors receiving for themselves the rest of the territory. 
These Indians are the best husbandmen in the country; the finest 
fruits in the market come from their fields; the finest horses from 
their stables. They are, moreover, distinguished in the midst of 
the foreign race that has enslaved them by the probity of their 
character , by their principles of morality, and by their habits of 
sobriety... 

" At the time of the conquest, a large number of pueblos manu- 
factured different stuffs; the loss of their liberty seems to have 
destroyed their industry ; besides they live in a state of complete 
ignorance. Although they observe regularly enough the forms of 
Christianity, they have not entirely relinquished their old supersti- 
tions. Not a school is to be found among them, not a book, and 
only some of the children learn to speak Spanish *. " 

" The South-Americans could not acquire any instruction under 
the Spanish government, whose wretched policy consisted in bru- 
talizing its subjects, rather than in developing their minds 2 . " 

" About thirty houses are dispersed over the missionary station 
of Duro ; its native population does not exceed two hundred and 
fifty individuals. A great number of the men wear nothing but a. 
piece of calico round the loins ; the girls go entirely naked until 

the age of ten years, and the boys until twelve or fourteen 

The ordinary food of the population is entirely vegetable. It con- 
sists of the products of wild trees, chiefly of various kinds of palm- 
tree nuts. The mission is superintended at present by a priest 
from la NatimU. The Aldea has no school ; the two only persons 
in the community who can read are the two captains 3 . " 

" Evidently, that part of New Mexico which borders on the Rio 
del Morte would produce abundant crops, but the inhabitants do 
not know how to cultivate their lands. Their natural indolence 
prevents their making any kind of progress; and it is probable, " 
says M. Gregg, " that there is not a region in any part of the world, 
bordering upon the empire of civilization, where the arts and 
sciences are so backward as here. Whoever has learnt to read 
and write, is considered a very learned personage ; and elementary 
education does not rise so high as even the first rules of arithmetic. 
This ignorant and indolent population increases but very slowly. 
Literature and the fine arts are scarcely known in New Mexico. 
Elementary instruction there, as we have already said, is confined 
within the narrowest limits ; so confined , that a woman who can 

1. Revue Britannique , July and August, 1848, pp. 113, 115.— 2. Idem, May, 1853, p 116. 
— 3. Idem, July and August, 1847, pp. 49 a 61. 



49 



write a Jew lines to her husband, is considered as a kind of phe- 
nomenon. Some years ago, an American caravan brought a print- 
ing press to Santa-Fe; the inhabitants of the town had never 
before seen any thing of the kind. A clever Mexican guessed the 
use he could make of it, and employed it during three weeks in 
printing a newspaper, by means of which he got himself elected 
Member of the Congress. This great undertaking accomplished, 
he discontinued his newspaper and abandoned the press, which 
is now only used for printing forms of prayer and catechisms 1 . " 

" Civilization and literature can experience no development 
while under the influence of the deplorable circumstances that 
continue to keep down the beautiful and unfortunate country of 
Columbia 2 , where the arts and sciences languish 3 . " 

Nothing is more calculated to prove how little civilization is 
to be found among the South Americans, than the curious inci- 
dents related in the travels of M. d'Orbigny : Ci I obtained at last, 33 
says the learned traveller, " the indispensable permission to leave 
Montevideo. The Brazilian officer on guard at the gate — these offi- 
cers frequently cannot read — appeared to see me do so with regret, 
to judge by the ill-humour and impertinence with which he met 
the exhibition of my passport \ " 

" During a barometrical observation on the sea-shore, an officer 
of the same nation asked me if I had leave to draw the plan of 
Montevideo. I thought 1 had sufficiently answered his question by 
showing him the nature of my instrument ; but I was mistaken, 
so great is the ignorance of the Brazilians ! Another time, accom- 
panied by twenty soldiers, he repeated his question : I gave him 
the same answer. They conducted me to the fortress of San- Jose 
as a state criminal; and, after two interrogatories, dragged me to 
the guard-house without allowing me to write to the general, and I 
was thrown into a damp dungeon, where [ found twenty other per- 
sons, of whom fifteen, at least, were in chains 5 . 33 

" At Corrientes, you recognize immediately the persons who 
have been educated out of the province ; comparatively speaking, 
their manners and conversation are quite different from those of 
the inhabitants who have never left the country, and who can 
scarcely write legibly in their native tongue 6 . 

" The superstition of the inhabitants of Buenos- A yres was so 
great, that the women were persuaded that the English had tails 

1. Revue Britannique, July, August, 1848, p. 111. — 2. Colombie, Vnivers pittoresque, p. 23. — 

8. Malte-Brun, vol. xi, p. 545. — 4. FOrbigny, vol. i, p. 35. — 5. idem, vol. n, pp. 50, 51. 

— 6. Idem, vol. I, p. 357. 

i 



30 



like the devil : a conviction which lasted a long time, and only 
disappeared at the first alliance between the English and the Ar- 
gentines *. " 

Mine host at Del Monte, who talked politics, and read the 
newspapers and a little history, passed for an enlightened man in 
the midst of this rude population 2 . 1' 

" In the opinion of the Spaniards of Yungos, my profession of 
naturalist necessarily included that of medicine; not that they the 
less frequently importuned me to mend their watches. 3 " 

" A governor, in the opinion of the poor people of Santa-Ana, is 
a supernatural being, invested with all imaginable rights 4 . The 
inhabitants of Santo-Corazon did not know whether a governor, 
whose powers had been so highly extolled to them, was a man or a 
god. They inquired whether his head was shaved, as the priest 
was the first person after God 5 . " 

After such recitals, it requires a strong effort of memory to 
call to mind that the title of this chapter is Knowledge; but, on 
this subject, we shall present no more reflections than we have on 
the preceding ones. It is better to let the reader form his own 
conclusions. 

Having spoken of the light which intellect diffuses, we are na- 
turally led to speak of the discoveries of industry, of commercial 
enterprises, and of the wealth that flows from them; we shall 
unite all these subjects under the general title of prosperity. 

Prosperity. — Let us hear an eye-witness very competent on 
this subject : " North America, " says M. Michel Chevalier, " is 
a country of blessings for the working man and the peasant. 
What a contrast between our Europe and this America ! After I 
had disembarked at New York, I thought every day was Sunday, 
for the population that fills Broadway seemed to be always in 
their holiday clothes. I did not see any of those countenances faded 
by privations or the noxious vapours of Paris : nothing that re- 
sembled our miserable scavengers, our rag-gatherers, or our bar- 
row-women. Every man was comfortably wrapped up in his 
great coat, and every woman had a cloak and a bonnet made in 
the last Paris fashion : rags, dirt, and misery, degrade women 
still more than men V' 

"The admirable prosperity of the United States is much more the 
fruit of labour than the reform of taxation 7 . 8 

" Here every one enjoys, or at least spends. The means 



1. D'Orbigliy, vol. I, p. 485.— 2. Idem, p. 631. — 3. Idem, vol. II, p. 446.-4. idem, p. 604. 

— 5. idkm, p 644. — 6. Michel Chevalier, p. 210. — 7 .'idem, p. 218. 



51 



of living are ample ; they wear plenty of clothing. Every one pro- 
duces largely, because the country consumes largely, and every 
one consumes largely, because he gains largely K " 

(i The newspaper Le Pays, in a recent article, publishes some 
reflections on the message which the President of the United 
States has just addressed to Congress. It acknowledges, with that 
statement before it, that it is a grand and wonderful spectacle, 
this unheard of prosperity, this gigantic development , that has 
already absorbed one half of the New World! We really must 
admit that this society, democratic in the highest sense of the 
term, presents at this moment a great example to the universe. 
Where is there a happier, a quieter, a more powerful, or a more 
prosperous country to be found than this North America, which 
has not yet existed a hundred years ? When we consider all 
that has been achieved by this energetic Anglo-Saxon race, we 
wonder as to what degree of prosperity and grandeur these trans- 
atlantic republicans will shortly attain : these Americans, that a 
witty man lately named the English of the future 2 . " 

From the testimony of Balbi, no country in the world has ever 
undertaken, in so short a space of time, such immense labours in 
canals and railroads as the United States. These works surpass 
in extent all similar construe! ions that have been executed else- 
where, and the short time in which they have been completed is 
without a precedent in the annals of nations 3 . 

" Since the last war with England, industry and commerce have 
made immense progress in the United Stales. The number of 
spinning machines, at this time, is estimated at little short of a 
million. The book-trade has made an astonishing progress, and 
the productions of the periodical press have increased to a degree 
that has never been attained by the most polished nations of the 
earth. The merchants of the United States have extended their 
operations to every part of the globe. They are the factors of 
nearly the whole world, and their commerce becomes every day 
more flourishing 4 . •- 

" It is in North America that industry has arrived at the highest 
pitch 5 . " 

" The United States are not only one of the principal maritime 
nations of the globe, but the second commercial power in the 
world. Their navy sustained in a signal manner her honour and 
her independence against the Queen of the Ocean. Her flag waves 

1. Michel Chevalier, pp. 219, 220. — 2. Steele, December 23, 1833. — 3. Balbi , p. 984. — 

4. Idem, pp. 991, 992. — 5. Idem, p. 96*. 



in every port, and her commerce is so extensive that her mer- 
chants have become, we may say, the factors of the Old and New 
World K" 

" Brought into existence but yesterday, and agitated from her 
cradle by the efforts of a dawning civilization, North America has 
found in herself a profusion of life, courage, intelligence, which 
has made her equal to the most terrible exigences. Without re- 
spected and strong traditions, such as those which sustain monar- 
chies ; without that display of bayonets which youthful governments 
seek to make up for the want of that moral 'prestige which they have 
beeujunable to acquire; in a word, without support in the past, or 
jeven in the present, the Union has been able to resist violent storms, 
and tq.fsurvive the prophecies that have so often threatened her 
t with infallible ruin a . " 

■ /'At is not a question, then, of the past for this country, but of 
.-the future ! When we see the progress accomplished in so short a 
time; plenty everywhere, and misery nowhere; churches, schools, 
towns, rising on every side, as if by enchantment, in the midst of 
forests, which, a short time ago, were scarcely inhabited or known; 
this hardy population, active, persevering, still rude, but eager 
for knowledge, and always advancing, we feel a lively impression 
of joy; and the mind, soothed with pleasing ideas, yields at last 
without resistance to the most ambitious hopes 3 . " 

" Although the aspect of New England/' says M. Goodrich, " is 
rugged and unpleasing, labour and taste have endowed her with 
pleasant and prosperous towns and villages. The heights and the 
valleys are enriched by cultivation; and the traveller would with 
difficulty find in any other country a people living in such a state 
of comfort. If, in this country, there are few persons immensely 
rich, there are also very few who are poor. 

" The inhabitants of this region are moral and religious in a 
high degree. The churches and other places for public worship 
are numerous, and the day of rest is strictly observed. There is 
also a number of charitable societies; and colleges, where public 
lectures are delivered, have been institutedin nearly ail the towns, 
and in a great many villages*. " 

We will not multiply quotations which would fatigue the reader, 
nor can we enter into details worthy of the industry and commerce 
of a nation, whose outward march nearly equals in rapidity that of 
its steam engines; but we cannot refrain from showing, by a few 



1 Balbi, p. 970. — 2. Revue Britannique, 1848, January, February, p. 279. — 3. Idem, p. 183 
to 949. — *. Goodrich, p. 69. 



o3 



figures, the results contained in the work recently published (4850) 
by M. Goodrich, Consul of the United States : 

Marine products 

Products of woods and forests 
Agricultural products . . . 
Vegetable products .... 
Manufactured products . . . 
Miscellaneous 

Total, including the different fractions omitted above, 700 mil- 
lions of francs ! ^ " " -^ 

" There are now (1853) more than 4,000 leagues oLra^j^^T^v 
completed, and 2,000 leagues of canals. The electricjxel^rim^^" 4 ^^ ^ 
established on more than 3,000 leagues, is come into coi^njgrf&sfc . 
A message of 20 words is sent a distance of 2,000 lea^^^^Jt }-* 
5 francs, and an answer is returned in an hour. In thes^^|t. -.^f. 
years, the average number of emigrants who have annually arriv^-^*' 
in the United States has been 400,000 K " 

" The increase of the population is in proportion to that of trade. 
According to the census of 1851, the total number of inhabitants in 
the United States on the 1 st of June, 1850, amouted to 23,263,488. 
The positive increase since the 1 st June, 1840, has been 6,194,035, 
and the relative increase is thirty-six per cent. 

" The decennial increase in the most favoured regions of Europe 
is less than one-and-a-half per cent; whilst, in the United States, it 
reaches three -and-a-half per cent. If the increase in this country 
and that of the European nations continue in the same proportions, 
in forty years the population of the United States will exceed the 
population of the following States united : England, France, Spain, 
Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. " 

Let us now take a survey of South America with M. d'Orbigny; 
and let us see in these lands, so richly endowed by Providence, 
what elements of prosperity we can put on a parallel with the civi- 
lization of the United States : 

" There is not a single manufactory in Buenos-Ayres " says 
M. d'Orbigny, {i that takes advantage of the products of the soil : 
thus the country necessarily grows poorer and poorer. It is the 
same in all the Republics of South America 2 . It is greatly to be 
wished, for the Correntinos, that the progress of industry would 
reveal to them the new modes of employing the raw materials, so 
as to perfect the manipulation among themselves. This would free 
them from the tribute they pay to strangers; for, possessing all the 



14 millions. 
34 — 
53 — 
79 — 
26 — 
113 — 



1. Goodricli, pp. 27, 28, 357 and following pages. — 2. D'Orbigny, vol. i, p. 523. 



elements of prosperity, they only want to know how to turn them 
to account. The cultivation of cotton, notwithstanding its good 
quality, produces next to nothing l . " 

" The environs of some of the towns in Sari-Nicolas remind one 
sometimes of France; hut, on looking a little farther, we find our- 
selves in America. No cultivated fields, no bright country houses : 
the plain, the naked plain, as far as the eye can see , without the 
ornament of a siugle tree. At distant intervals, a wretched cabin 
is with difficulty discovered. 

" If, profiting by the mercantile tastes of the inhabitants ofCo- 
chachamba, and by their enterprising disposition, a firm govern- 
ment would encourage the establishment of woollen, linen, cotton, 
and silk manufactures, of which the raw materials abound in the 
country, it would be easy to naturalize them in this town. It 
would be the more easy to create a manufacturing city here, that 
the inhabitants live in idleness, and consequently in misery, and 
have a natural taste among theni for manufactures 2 . '" 

" Industry, strictly speaking, is very backward at Santa-Cruz; 
no establishment for weaving is to be found there, nor indeed have 
they a manufactory of any sort 3 . 

Formerly, all kinds of furniture were made at Chiquitos; but 
now, I only see rosaries mentioned in the returns 4 . The natural 
productions make it easy to conceive what agricultural and com- 
mercial improvements might be introduced there, and that incal- 
culable advantages might be derived from them 3 . '* 

" Potosi, so rich in former times, declines daily, and is threat- 
ened with total ruin. What is wanted in this city is an industrious 
population, Capable of making use of all the advantages that are to 
be found there 6 . " 

(( On approaching Oruro, I was struck with the miserable aspect 
of the town, and with the great number of ruined habitations that 
I saw in every direction : there ace so few inhabitants, that it ap- 
pears abandoned 7 . " 

'" At San-Pedro , the country around the inhabited districts is 
changed since the arrival of the Europeans : a great part of the land 
is covered with thistles. 

" In the province of Argentine the growlh of weeds is so rapid 
that there is reason to fear that the province of Buenos- Ayres will 
end by being entirely overrun with them 8 . " 



1. D'Orbigny, vol. I, pp. 347, 348. — ! 
vol. Ill, p. 63. — 5. idem, pp. 70, 74. — 
pp. 472, 473. 



2. Idem, vol. II, p. 480. — 3. Idem, p. 572.-4. Idem, 
■ 6. Hem, \). 299. — 7. idem, p. 313. — 8. idem, vol. I, 



S5 



" At Chicasica the abundance of flat hemp arid wool would 
amply supply materials lor industry iri a province where the niirit- 
ber of running streams and the downward course of the rivers 
would furnish every facility for establishing manufactories. Work- 
ing the mines, however, is deemed sufficient, and agriculture is re- 
strained to supplying the miners with the necessaries of life V* 

" Is it credible that for the last sixty years the unhappy natives 
of Caupolican have been forced to carry on their backs, for a distance 
of fifty or sixty leagues, the productions of several villages ?. . . Is it 
credible that with such a magnificent river as the Beni at their com- 
mand they should hitherto have used but simple rafts 2 ? " 

" Cadelaria has been destroyed for some years, with all the other 
small towns and villages in its neighbourhood. The university of 
Cordova, formerly considerable, has long ago fallen into decay, as 
well as the public library, which had remained almost without 
readers for many years 3 . " Chucuito has fallen very low : nothing 
remains but the ruins of the monuments formerly situated in the 
environs of Cuzco. Huanuco is but the shadow of what she was 
under the dominion of the Incas. Junin is nothing but a wretched 
village \ " 

" At Gochabamba agriculture is confined to the mere necessaries 
of life. The oleaginous plants, and those used in dyeing, as well 
as numbers of others useful to industry and the arts, are not even 
known 5 . " 

" The original industry of Valle-Grande has been lost; agricul- 
ture was gradually neglected, and reduced at length to the cultiva- 
tion of a little Indian corn, which provides in some degree for the 
sustenance of the inhabitants ; of a little barley, for the beasts of 
burden \ and of aji, or red pimento, as the only article for expor- 
tation 6 . " 

u I traversed the town of Del Monte, which has a most wretched 
appearance. All the houses are roofed with straw, and are in a state 
of dilapidation, showing extreme poverty. The ancient fort is 
totally abandoned. The building once used for barracks is falling 
into ruins : rubbish and weeds alone forbid an entrance 7 . The 
pasture lands Of Bojada, so rich in horned cattle a short time ago, 
are now reduced to the most miserable state 8 . If we except the 
principal villages, in the rest of the country nothing exists but 
wretched huts , the only furniture of which consists of a pallet 

1. D'Orbigny, vol. n, p. 461. — 2. idem, vol. in, p. 395. — 3. Balbi, pp. 1071, 107*2. — 
4. idem, p. 1059. — 5. D'OrbigllV, vol. II, p. 481. —6. idem, p. 503. — 7. idem, \ol. I, p. 628. 
— 8. idem, p. 432. 



ol sticks covered with cow hide, a rude table, and a few broken 
chairs or stools, which are often exchanged for blocks of wood, or 
cows' heads. The kitchen utensils consist of an iron kettle, a coffee 
pot , a tin mug, for which is often substituted a cow's horn, a pewter 
dish, and two or three iron or horn spoons. The use of plates is 
far from general; they commonly eat out of the dish 1 . The dis- 
order and filth which reigns in [the houses of Navaro are the dis- 
tinguishing characteristics of the inhabitants of the provinces 2 . f 

" In the less opulent houses, plates and forks are very rare : all 
eat with their fingers. The animals used for food are cut up on the 
ground upon their skin, so that the tlesh is always covered with 
blood, soiled by the mud and dung, and rarely washed before it is 
roasted. The dairy is no better managed, so that the cheese is de- 
testable, and the butter, badly washed, and being put like grease into 
bladders, has aluiost always a bad taste 2 . " 

u In these days, " saysM. Lesson, a traveller as learned as he is 
impartial, '* nothing reminds us of those times of opulence, in 
which the traders of Lima were rich enough to pave the principal 
street with massive silver. Trade was recovering, when civil war 
put a stop to every thing, and plunged Peru back into misery \ " 

"This city, the richest in the New World, is also the most corrupt. 
The extraordinary luxury of the few elbows the utter wretchedness 
of the many. The result of this is an extraordinary degree of 
corruption, daily increasing. Securely disguised by their dress, 
the women can act intrigues, even with their own husbands if it so 
please them. The extreme licentiousness and general misery of the 
country lead them to misconduct themselves to feed their luxury. 
In the evening they fill the streets and theatres, where they attack 
strangers 5 . *■ 

" In Mexico, the completion of the great canal has been interrupt- 
ed not only by revolutions, but by the want of keeping it in repair; 
the old works are in the most deplorable state, and threaten the city 
with the greatest disasters. It has been proposed several times to 
abandon this country. The suburbs of the town are encumbered 
with ruined houses, rubbish, and filth; you often find extreme 
wretchedness and dirt in the interior of elegant buildings. These 
suburbs are the ordinary resort of twenty thousand beggars, who 
display all the marks of the most hideous misery 6 . " 

What a distance between these two degrees of civilization ! But, as 
it U not rare 1o find prosperity tin result of knavery , and poverty 

1. D'Orhignv, vol. I, p. 547. — 2. Hem, p. 630. — i&m. p. 545. — 4. Billti. p. 1050. — 
5. D'Or!%ny, vol. in, p. 40,). — 6. Balbi, pp. 1020, 1023. 



57 



that of rustic simplicity, let us see whether such is the case in the 
two Americas, or whether good morals are there the companions of 
prosperity, and vice the associate of misery. 

Morality. — Our readers doubtless have noticed that, in the 
wish to avoid even the appearance of partiality, we have, as much 
as possible, refrained from expressing an opinion. We have done 
more, we have abstained from stating the facts ourselves. Our 
readers will be pleased at our resolution to persevere in this reserve, 
and even to keep absolute silence, when we might say so much ! 
Let them listen to the recitals of men, who cannot be suspected of 
partiality, since they neither belong to the nation, nor to the creed, 
of which they unwittingly show us the admirable fruits : 

" I sought, " says M. de Tocqueville, " for the causes to which is 
to be attributed the maintenance of the political institutions of the 
Americans, and religion appeared to me one of the principal. 
Now, that I am studying individuals, I find it again ; and I perceive 
that it is no less useful to the citizen than to the entire people. 
It directs the morals; and by regulating the household it succeeds in 
regulating the State. T do not doubt for an instant that the great 
strictness of morals to be noticed in the United States originates in 
their creed. Religion, there, is often too weak to restrain man 
amidst the numberless temptations which fortune presents to him : 
she may not be able to moderate in him the thirst for gain which all 
around excites ; but she reigns supreme over the mind of woman ; 
woman gives the tone to morals. America is certainly in the whole 
world the country where the marriage tie is the most respected, and 
where the highest and most just idea of conjugal happiness has been 
formed. In Europe, nearly all the disorders of society take their 
rise around the family hearth, and not far from the nuptial couch. 
It is there that men imbibe a contempt for the ties of nature and for 
lawful pleasures, and acquire a taste for disorder, excitement, and 
change. Agitated by the tumultuous passions which have often 
troubled his own dwelling, the European only submits with diffi- 
culty to the authority of the legislators of the State. When the 
American retires from the agitations of the political world, and re- 
turns to his family, he breathes an atmosphere of peace and order. 
There all his pleasures are simple and natural, his enjoyments inno- 
cent and tranquil, and as he arrives at happiness by the regularity 
of his life, he accustoms himself without difficulty to regulate his 
opinions as well as his tastes. Whilst the European endeavours to 
escape from his domestic cares by disturbing society, the American 
seeks in his home the love of order, which he carries with him 



8S 

into the affairs of the State. In the United States, religion not only 
forms the morals, but extends her empire over the mind k " 

Let us hear also M . Michel Chevalier on the same subj ect : n The 
American masses are more completely initiated than the European 
masses in all that concerns family, and above all married life. 
The union of man and wife is more sacred amongst the labouring 
classes in America, than amongst the independent classes of all the 
countries in Europe. 

"Although, in America, the celebration of marriage is surround- 
ed "with much fewer formalities and less show than with us; and 
although the marriage tie is not indissoluble, as in our country , the 
cases of adultery are very rare. The unfaithful wife there would be 
a woman lost to society ; and any man guilty of seduction, or known to 
hate an illegitimate attachment, would be excommunicated by the 
public. In the United States, even amongst the labouring classes, 
man is more completely initiated into the duties of the stronger 
towards the weaker sex than he is in a portion of the middle classes' 
ill France. Not only the American mechanic or farmer spares his 
wife, as much as possible, all fatiguing work or laborious occupa- 
tion, but he has, besides, for her and for all women in general, 
attentions which are unknown amongst us, even by people who 
pride themselves upon a certain elevation of mind, and even on a 
literary education. In the United States, in public places and in 
travelling, every man is equal; but a woman, whatever may be the 
rank or fortune of her husband, is secure of commanding respect 
and attention from every one. 

"All books in America, without excepting novels, suppose the 
women to be chaste* and no one relates scandalous adventures. 

"Literature in our country (France) has a perfectly different 
character. When a European undertakes to describe in fiction 
some of those great catastrophes which are seen amongst us in 
married life, he takes care to excite the pity of the reader by show- 
ing two uncongenial beings, united by constraint. Although a 
long tolerance has relaxed our morals, he would succeed with diffi- 
culty in exciting our interest for his characters, if he did not begin 
by excusing their faults. This artifice generally succeeds ; we are 
prepared to be indulgent, by the events that are continually passing 
before our eyes. 

" The Americans could not make such excuses plausible in the 
eyes of their readers; their customs and their laws are opposed to 



i; Tocqueville. vol. it; p, 222. 



such reasoning; and, despairing; to render immorality acceptable, 
they do not describe it. This is partly the cause of the small num- 
ber of novels published in the United States l : " 

" One would suppose that, with regard to morals, we have granted 
a singular immunity to man; there appears to be One standard 
of morality for him, and another for his wife : and, according to 
public opinion, the same act is considered in one case as a crime, 
in the other, as a simple fault . 

" The Americans do not acknowledge this singular allotment of 
duties and rights; amongst them, the seducer is as much disho- 
noured as his victim. 

ei It is true that the Americans rarely pay to woman those assi- 
duous attentions which she receives in Europe; but they always 
testify, by their conduct, that they believe her to be modest and vir- 
tuous; and they respect so completely her moral liberty, that, in 
her presence, every one is careful that not a word should be uttered 
in conversation which might wound her delicacy. It is com- 
mon for a young, girl to undertake, without fear, a long journey 
alone 2 ." 

"I have no hesitation in saying, that, although in the United States 
woman rarely goes beyond her domestic circle where, however, she 
is in many respects very independent), nowhere, in my opinion, does 
she occupy a higher sphere h" 

" North America, " says an Anglo-American writer, quoted by 
Malte-Brun, et is the paradise of women; they neither labour in the 
fields, or perform the hard work of the house . A husband, whose wife 
were to be seen fulfilling these toilsome duties, would be considered 
an unfeeling man, or not sufficiently industrious to maintain her. 
He would blush at it. All that the women have to do is confined to 
working at their needle for themselves and their negresses, over- 
looking them, setting them their tasks, and keeping up good con- 
duct and cleanliness in the family. For this reason, even in the 
lowest stations, Ave find a degree of education and good manners 
which honour mankind." 

To complete the description of these domestic habits, we shall 
transcribe what a late publication relates of the order and morality 
that reign in the great manufactories of the United States : that is to 
say, under circumstances in which, as every one knows, there is 
the greatest difficulty in preserving purity of morals. 

u Lowell, the town of all others in which the genius of the 



f. Tocque-Ville, YOl. IV. pp. 84, 85, 86, 87. — 2. idem, pp. 102, 103. — 3. idem, p. 104, 



60 



Anglo-Americans displays its greatest originality, presents a sin- 
gular aspect. From whatever side you approach, nothing is per- 
ceived but large buildings, surrounded by detached houses prettily 
decorated. Every where are to be seen pyramids of balls of cot- 
ton; manufactories three and four stories high; forges, workshops, 
manufactured articles of all kinds, and the perpetual movement 
of an ant-hill. Raw materials arrive from all quarters, and ma- 
nufactured articles are imported with the same alacrity. 

" Each industrial company has as many boarding-houses as are 
necessary for lodging all the persons attached to its manufactories. 
These boarding-houses are neat buildings, with green shutters, 
constructed so as to lodge from twenty to twenty-five persons. 
They contain invariably, besides the private rooms, a dining-room 
and a saloon : all plainly but comfortably furnished. They are 
let to middle-aged women, in general widows of good reputation, 
who are answerable for the conduct of their boarders. Besides, 
any complaint made of them to the director of the company, whe- 
ther by the boarders or any other person, is carefully examined, 
and followed up by a strict investigation. 

" Since 1836, the year of its foundation, the authorities of 
Lowell have laboured incessantly to embellish their town, to pro- 
mote its salubrity, and to increase the comforts of the population. 
They have paved the streets, made footways, facilitated the drainage, 
adopted a fine system of lighting, and erected public buildings for 
religious instruction, popular education, and benevolent societies. 
Their solicitude has induced the establishment of a preparatory 
school, in which the elements of general knowledge are taught 
to pupils who intend to follow the lectures of the superior schools : 
8 intermediary, and 36 elementary schools, are frequented by 
3,500 scholars. Wants of another kind have not been neglected ; 
there are two banks, with a joint capital exceeding four millions 
of francs, and a tire-insurance company. Nor have the future 
prospects of the town been neglected. Comfortable and even 
elegant lodgings have been prepared, not only for the inhabitants 
who may stand in want of them, but also for visitors who might 
wish to stay there awhile. In short, every means that the most 
sagacious foresight could adopt has been employed, in the interest 
of the population, to lay the foundation of great and lasting pro- 
sperity upon the widest bases. 

"In order to be thoroughly acquainted with the present state of 
this great manufacturing centre, we must examine the comfort 
and morality of the working classes, and the means that have 



6 1 



been employed to insure the ulterior improvement of their 
intellectual and moral faculties. First, there is an inspector- 
general, who keeps active and vigorous watch over the whole 
corporation. In the manufactories, which are also submitted to 
strict regulations, there is, in every chamber, a trustworthy 
overseer, who is answerable for the order and good conduct of 
those under his care; and, lastly, there is a guardian, whose special 
duty is to inspect the manufactories several times during the 
night, in such a way as to render any infraction of the regula- 
tions an impossibility. Any person found to be notoriously dis- 
solute, lazy, dishonest, intemperate, or having contracted the 
habit of absenting himself from divine service, or otherwise 
violating the Sabbath, is dismissed from the company's service. 
No kinds of spirituous liquors are allowed, unless ordered by a 
medical man, and all games of chance, or cards, are forbidden 
throughout the territory. 

"The health of the working people employed in the manu- 
factories is also considered, and with just reason, as an object 
of the most serious importance ; and, in consequence, every 
measure has been taken to insure the comfort of all, and to 
diminish the causes of disease. For this purpose, the chambers 
and working-rooms are kept well aired, and heated at a uniform 
temperature, whilst the greatest precautions are taken to prevent 
accidents. The different companies have established jointly a large 
hospital in a healthy spot , where the sick are admirably tended 
under the care of an eminent physician. The workwomen are 
well dressed, without luxury, but with a certain degree of ele- 
gance, and, above all, with the strictest attention to cleanliness. 
They all appear very satisfied with their situation ; and not a 
trace of depression or suffering is to be met with on their faces. 
I declare solemnly that, amongst the crowds I had the opportunity 
of examining in the different manufactories, I did not notice a 
single countenance which left a painful impression on my mind, 
nor see one young girl obliged to work for her livelihood, whom I 
could have wished to rescue from these works. 

" The moral police established there is excellent, and insures 
the good conduct of individuals, and the purity of the public 
morals. Whoever is guilty of the slightest immorality, or even 
of a blamable action, is either not employed, or, on discovery, 
ceases to be so immediately. To keep company with a person of 
doubtful reputation is sufficient not only to hinder admission 
into the manufactories, but to procure a dismissal, if already 



62 



employed. The names of all the persons dismissed for ill 
behaviour are inscribed in a book, which is open to all the 
establishments in the town, and thus prevents these persons 
from ever being employed there again. This strict watchfulness 
produces the best results. Thus the statistical reports of the 
manufactories of Lowell prove, without contradiction, that there 
exists amongst the working classes of this town a high degree of 
morality, fit to serve in every respect as an example to all other 
manufacturing districts. But we must also admit that nothing 
has been neglected to attain so lofty an aim. Measures have been 
taken in order that the population may easily enjoy the recreation 
of reading during the intervals of labour, in the evenings, and on 
Sundays and holidays. Books may be obtained from the libra- 
ries and reading-rooms, and the workmen even receive, direct 
from their offices, newspapers and reviews. It is extremely easy 
to procure books, but always good books. The town has a public 
library, containing five thousand volumes, and the working men's 
association another, of three thousand three hundred volumes, 
without mentioning numerous religious congregations, who all 
have collections more or less extensive. 

"A great number of the young workwomen frequent evening- 
schools during the winter; and sometimes join together in classes 
to take lessons in foreign languages, at a trifling expense. There 
are also clubs, named in general circles of emulation, of which 
the members meet every fortnight, in order to submit their 
literary compositions to the critical examination of the assembly. 
Thus everything contributes to raise the moral tone of the popu- 
lation : material and moral inspection, churches, schools, libra- 
ries, literary circles, exterior comfort, savings-banks, and bene- 
volent institutions. Besides, it is easy to imagine that persons, 
brought up at home with all the rigidity of manners of New- 
England, bring with them to the manufactories a high tone of 
morality, and easily become, with the help of the good adminis- 
tration of Lowell, an incomparable working population 1 ." 

" The American mechanic knows better how to work, and is 
more fond of it, than the European, The American artisan is 
acquainted with labour, not only in its sorrows, but in its 
rewards ; his clothes are as good as those of a Senator in Congress, 
and he likes to see his wife as well dressed as the wives and 
daughters of the rich merchants in New York, and following, like 



1, Revue Britannique, 1847, July, Aupst, pp. 69 to 85. 



83 



them, the Parisian fashions. His house is solidly built, very 
warm, and very clean ; and his table is almost as abundantly 
covered as that of his more opulent countrymen. In that 
country the mere necessaries of life, for the whites, includes 
several things which, amongst us, are considered as luxuries, not 
only by the working population, but, in certain ranks, amongst 
the middle classes l ." 

" The American masses appreciate much more fully than the 
European all that relates to the dignity of man, or at least to his 
own dignity. The American workman is full of self-respect, and 
shows it, not only by an extreme susceptibility, but by exactions 
which to us, citizens of Europe, would appear inconceivable, by 
his repugnance to make use of the European word master, which 
he exchanges for that of employer, and also by much greater 
honesty, punctuality, and scrupulousness in his transactions. 
The American workman is exempt from the slavish vices of 
lying and stealing, so frequent amongst our labouring classes, 
particularly in our towns and manufactories. 

"The French workman is much more submissive outwardly; 
but, pressed by want, and surrounded by temptations, he rarely 
lets slip an opportunity of cheating his bourgeois when he thinks 
he can do so with impunity. The workman of Lyons takes the 
peignage d'onces; at Reims he pilfers the wool. It is certain that 
frauds are committed in America ; there is more than one clerk 
whose conscience is burdened with innumerable peccadilloes, but 
these petty thefts are exceptions. The character of the American 
artisan, considered as a workman, is highly respected, and excites 
the envy of the European, who draws a comparison between what 
he sees there, and what he has left in his own country. 

"What I have said of the artisan may be applied with still 
greater force to the peasant. The American farmer, not being- 
obliged daily to battle with his master for the price of his work, 
surrounded by husbandmen like himself, and ignorant of the 
temptations to which the inhabitants of large towns are exposed, 
possesses all the qualities of the artisan, and fewer defects : he 
is less unjust, and less jealous of the rich and cultivated classes. 

" If, then, we examine the existence in general of the mass 
of the American people, we shall find it superior to that of 
Europeans. 

" Perfection for the masses, in every country, consists, above 

1. Michel Chevalier, p, 382. 



64 



all things, in knowing and observing punctually their duties 
towards God, their country, their families, and themselves ; in 
working assiduously and conscientiously, in being honest citizens, 
attentive husbands, and good fathers , and in watching over the 
comfort and good conduct of those related to them. In order to 
compare with equity, and without fear of gross error, the most 
numerous class of American and European society, we must 
compare them under these differents points of view; for they 
belong to every scale of civilization, and every variety of the 
human race, and it is upon their degree of development and 
permanence amongst the greater number that depends the degree 
of stability of empires *. " 

(i Strong, vigorous, intelligent, active, full of daring and energy, 
but, at the same time , prudent and determined, the American, " 
says the Revue Britannique, " makes an incomparable labourer. 
No difficulty discourages him, no obstacle stops him. It is particu- 
larly to him that may be applied the fine idea of M. Guizot : 
' Nothing is an obstacle without being at the same time a means. 
Clear-headed and practical, he always tries to accomplish his 
designs by the simplest means and the shortest way : he is ready 
to admit all kinds of methods, but only as helps, and in order to 
have the pleasure of perfecting them; his enterprising disposition 
leaves no means untried, no experiment unverified, no process 
unemployed; possessing in rare proportion daring and skill, he 
undertakes the most difficult enterprises without anxiety or 
hesitation, and succeeds in them while he playfully gets rid of a 
thousand obstacles that others, from the first, would have deemed 
insurmountable. Patient and resolute, nothing discourages and 
nothing stops him ; above all he is a man of action, and as such 
is always on the breach : and, with more reason than Beau- 
marchais, he might adopt for his motto : My life is a struggle. 3 

" The American scarcely takes any relaxation. If he quits his 
private business for a few moments, it is only to be busied with 
public affairs. From morning till night, from his rising up to 
his lying down, he is constantly occupied ; even his meals takes 
him but a few minutes. 

" Frequently, in the solitudes of the West, Frenchmen and 
Americans may be seen living close to each other : nothing could 
afford a more striking contrast. The Frenchman rises much 
earlier, but he bustles about and makes a great noise, gives orders, 



1. Michel Chevalier, p. 378. 



I 65 

and ends by setting oft' to gossip with a fellow-countryman, who 
lives at a distance of several leagues. On his return, he breakfasts 
and begins to Avork, if, indeed, some hunting or fishing party has 

not been made up during his morning's visit He lives from 

day to day, amuses himself, drinks, and vegetates ; having no fixed 
purpose in view, he squanders his life with the carelessness of 
a child. 

"By his side, the American rises every day exactly at the same 
hour, not before dawn, but just in time to begin work, which he 
does not quit for the whole day, except for the few minutes which 
are strictly necessary for his meals. He labours in silence with 
zeal and assiduity, and adapts with wonderful facility every me- 
thod capable of improving the quality or quantity of his produc- 
tions. By his enlightened foresight no detail is neglected, no- 
thing is left to chance, and, in some degree, he forces Nature to 
stand his friend. 

" His aptness for all kinds of works is the greater, because he 
is ignorant of the very meaning of the word routine. He is 
anxious to acquaint himself with all kinds of methods, but it is in 
order to choose the best. It is easy to imagine the influence which 
such qualities must have upon the prosperity of a nation. The 
most laborious, and above all the one who works with the 
greatest power, sagacity, and energy, must advance much more 
rapidly than others in the track to wealth V 

Such are the morals and habits of the Protestant United States. 
To complete our parallel, we must sketch the moral physiognomy 
of the Roman Catholic States in the South; let us leave the pencil 
to one who paints from Nature : 

"The habits of immorality in the province of Corrientes are 
disgusting. After supper, every one retires to rest : it is the time 
for intrigues. The lover wraps himself in his poucho, and, 1o 
avoid being recognised, changes his hat for one that he does not 
wear in the day. On all sides favoured mortals may be seen 
entering at doors gently opened, at an appointed signal, by a young 
girl making every effort not to be heard by her mother, who 
sleeps in the adjoining room, and who often, on her side,, receives 
in secret a favoured lover; though the daughter is as perfectly 

aware of her mother's conduct, as the mother is of hers 

The husband, on his side, pays court to his mistresses, caring very 
little about what goes on at home, provided he finds his mate, 



1. Eevuc Britannique, 1S4S , July, August; J. Maglie, pp. 1'22 to 132. 



66 



Cigars ready , and something to eat. It is not even a rare thing, in 
families of a small fortune, to see the men the first to provoke 
intrigues in their own families, with the hope of deriving some 

benefit from them A woman is not in the least degraded in 

the eyes of her countrywomen for having one or two lovers, 
or for having had children by different fathers. The reader who 
would dare to accompany me into the houses of the poorer classes 
would shudder at the spectacle presented to his view. He would 
see all the children on the ground together, in the same room : the 
young slave keeping by the side of his young mistress, often naked, 
or half-dressed. In the kitchen the servants of both sexes are 
huddled together, just as they please; friends, enemies, men, 
women, girls, boys, married people, talking of every thing, 
naming every thing, and learning to do and say every thing. 
Thus, in this class corruption is carried to an extent, the very 
thought of which makes one shudder. Incest between brother 
and sister is not uncommon, especially in the country k " 

"The women at Corrientes complain of the inconstancy of the 
other sex. . . They themselves are more faithful to their lovers than 

to their husbands There is neither sincerity nor confidence 

in the inhabitants. On the contrary, they are distrustful to a 
ridiculous degree, especially towards strangers K" 

"A buffoon, by jests more obscene than witty, and accompanied 
by gestures still more indecent, excited general hilarity in the 
town by scenes which made me blush for the spectators, and 
which would have been unjustifiable even in the rudest and most 
barbarous ages h" 

"The corruption of morals has produced many diseases in this 
country : syphilis, which, amongst the Creoles, is accompanied 
with alarming symptoms, occasions agonizing pains that are rarely 
relieved, and is transmitted from father to child to such a 
degree, that it is not unusual to see unhappy babes disfigured by 
hideous buboes 4 ." 

Libertinism naturally leads to theft : " The peasants have little 
scruple in stealing their neighbour's cattle, in Buenos-Ayres 
these thefts are committed in open day, in the very sight of their 
owner V In time, it also produces cruelty. 

"Soon after my arrival in this country, the French, Italians, 
and other strangers warned me not to go from the port to the 
town without arms during the siesta, or in the evening ; other- 

1. D'Orbigny, vol. I, pp. 377, 378, 379. — 2. Idem, p. 382. — 3. Idem, p. 135. — 4. Item, 
p. 388. — 5. Idem, p. 163. 



67 

wise I should run the risk of being assassinated : and all 
strengthened their advice by the recital of tragical adventures. 
They whispered, while pointing to several men on horseback^ 
each with a long knife in his girdle : this one has already killed 
five persons, that other six ; and if I were to believe them, the 
most innocent had been guilty of the death of, at least, one of 
his fellow-creatures. I asked if there was no justice in the 
country? and I acquired the certainty that in this town, as well as 
in the whole Argentine Republic, the laws have no power against 
crime. When an assassin is incarcerated, it is only for a short 
time. The war of partisans and the bloodthirsty dispositions of the 
shepherds (gauchos), has rendered them as indifferent to the death 
of a man as to that of the beasts they are in the habit of killing. 
No trouble is taken to secure a criminal, so that the country is 
infected with banditti, who are considered as honest citizens 1 . " 

"At Buenos- Ayres, when the men have quitted the coffee-houses, 
where they have passed the evening in gaming, and all is silent, 
woe to him who strays beyond the centre of the city, or returns 
too late, unless armed with good pistols ! for he may be robbed even 
in the streets, near the square, by men who, putting a knife to 
his throat, will politely force him to strip l; . 

"Even the children in this country are early accustomed to 
cruelty, and amuse themselves in cutting with their knives the 
ham-strings of dogs, as they see their fathers do with oxen. In 
their childish sport, they show what will be the ferocity of their 
future disposition; for provided already with arms proportioned to 
their age, they are continually threatening to mutilate or kill 
each other when they quarrel. But let us turn from this disgust- 
ing picture of rustic manners 8 ." 

" The pulperias, which serve as resting-places for travellers, are 
the resort of all the idle vagabonds around, so that they are conti- 
nually the scene of quarrels generally ending in bloodshed 4 . * 

"A knife is indispensable to all who travel in the interior of 
the country, and the natives laugh at those who have forgotten to 
provide themselves with one V 

" Highway robbery is but too frequent in a country where the 
enforcement of the laws is unknown from being generally eluded, 
and it is very common to see armed men behave as if they were 
upon an enemy's territory 6 . The Gauchos of White Bay are va- 
gabonds, passionately fond of gaming, brandy, and women; essen- 



1 D'Ol'bignv, vol. I, pp. 423, 426. —2. Idem, p. 508. — 3. Idem, p, 512. — 4. Idem, pp S>28, 
529. — 5. Idem, p. 530. — 6. Idem, p. 622. 



OS 

tially lazy, of ferocious habits, and completely destitute of feeling. 
A man of the militia, in a quarrel, will rise without saying a word, 
draw his knife, and plunge it up to the haft in the side of his 
antagonist, who falls bathed in blood. If asked with indignation 
what is the motive of so horrid a crime , he replies with the utmost 
coolness that he had received a box on the ear, but, at least, he 
has had the pleasure of ripping up his enemy. Stabbing is an 
every-day occurrence amongst the inhabitants of the country 
around Buenos-Ayres : all the quarrels between the shepherds are 
decided by their knives... In general, they endeavour to strike 
their adversary in the face, and to leave a deep scar ; this is what 
they call marking their enemy, in allusion to marking the cattle with 
a hot iron l ." 

"I know not how much punch I was forced to drink at the fes- 
tival given in honour of my arrival at Santa-Cruz ; I had need of 
all my strength to support it. The licentiousness of the dances 
bordered on madness; the men exciting the women more and more 
by the liquors, which were profusely served in uninterrupted 
streams. The frenzy was heightened by the doors being closed, 
to prevent any one from leaving, and a penalty enforced of ten 
glasses of punch for the men, and six for the women, who should 
be detected in endeavouring to quit the ball 2 ."' 

"In this town the greater part of the year is passed in visits, 
amusements, and dances. At the parties given by married and 
single women, every one is forced to drink wine or liquors, very 
often until the senses attain the most extravagant degree of excite- 
ment 3 ." 

" The Tobas are far from cleanly in their habits *. The women 
of the countrv, out of vanity, resort in their youth to the abomi- 
nable practice of abortion; and for that purpose, during their 
pregnancy, they lay down on their backs, and get some one to 
strike their body. It is only when they become of a certain age 
that they bear the only child they choose to rear. In consequence, 
the vast plains of Chaco are nearly depopulated. The children go 
naked until the age of puberty, do just as they please, and never 
obey their mother, who is a slave to their slightest caprices K" 

"The woman who leads a profligate life is at length sent into 
exile, if she persists in disorderly conduct, which is not considered 
any crime in the men. But it must be allowed that this measure 
does not remedy the evil. The first woman placed in this situa- 



i. D'Orlrignv, vol. I, p. 664. —2. T.^m, vol. II. p. 528 — 3. Idem, p. 550. — k. Idem, vol. I, 
p. 307. — 5. idem, pp. 308, 309. 



69 



tion, and who was to be sent to Bueno-Vista, answered arrogantly 
that she was ready to obey, but that she would like to be accom- 
panied by the concubines of all the Government agents, begin- 
ning with those of the Governor and his brother V 

" The present governors of Brazil set the example of miscon- 
duct; the Indians do not srcuple to follow it, so 1hat universal cor- 
ruption reigns in the province 2 ." If it were only the civil and 
political chiefs! but listen: "At San-Iago they have a dance 
during which the women complain , in their songs, that they are 
bitten by ants, and whilst they scratch and hunt for these trouble- 
some insects, they uncover the greater part of their bodies : the 
cries and shrill whistling which accompany this dance carried 
me back, by their wildness, to the original state of the nation... 
In another dance , the women raise their hands in the air, and 
seizing one of the bystanders shake him soundly, in order to 
make him dance the better. They seized hold of us all by turns, 
without even excepting the priest. While the women were danc- 
ing at the Governor's, the men were singing wild and discordant 
airs in the square 3 ." 

"The corruption of the inhabitants is carried to the highest pitch. 
The young girls, who go entirely naked until the age of puberty, 
are lost to all feelings of modesty. When older, they make no 
scruple of misconduct. Unrestrained by any sound religious prin- 
ciple, they return to the original customs of their country, and 
abandon themselves indifferently to all their relations 4 /' 

"All the vices are allied; impurity leads to gaming. The inha- 
bitants of San-Roque are proud, and above all great gamblers, " says 
M. d'Orbigny. " The love of gaming, which is general throughout 
South America, is there beyond bounds. They gamble not only 
during the day, but all night long. All the skill of the gambler 
consists in cheating cleverly. Often a poor mother remains without 
food for her children, whilst her husband gambles all away, even to 
his horse 5 . " 

"The usual occupations of the richer inhabitants of Itaty are 
those of the rich of the other parts of the country : sleeping, smok- 
ing, drinking mate, and gaming. Every time I called on the priest 
I found him, as well as the governor, playing at moute, instead of 
endeavouring to eradicate the love of gaming so ardent and ungo- 
vernable in nearly all the Americans 6 . " And then, gaming bears 
its own fruits : "A number of individuals have made immense 

1. D'Orbigny, vol. I, pp. 355, 356. — 2. Idem, vol. II, p. 606. —3. Idem, p. 638.- 4. Idem, 
vol. Ill, p. 95. — 5. Idem, vol. I, pp. 146. 147 — 6. Idem, p. 203. 



70 

fortunes by the odious trade of gambling at the pulperias, where are 
often enacted scenes which end tragically for the proprietor, for 
scarcely any are free from bloodshed, and the master often falls a 
victim to the fury of the gamesters and drunkards V 

Such morals must be betrayed by the language ; it is said by Him 
who knew the heart of man : " Out of the abundance of the heart, 
the mouth speaketh. " This is verified here : 

"At Yotaity-Guacu," says M.d'Orbigny, "at dinner parties, and, 
indeed, in all numerous assemblies, my delicacy was continually 
wounded by the vulgarity, the coarse jests, and the obscenity of the 
conversation indulged in by both men and women before young 
people, who, however, did not testify the least surprise at it. What 
a cynical language ! what rude manners ! Will it be believed that 
at the dessert disgusting tricks formed part of the entertainment, 
that the guests threw dirty things at one another's heads, and that 
some pratical jesters defiled even the dishes of preserves, in order 
to prevent any one else from touching them?... And let it be un- 
derstood that far from heightening the colours of this picture, I have 
softened them down. How often have I painfully endured what I 
heard and saw with disgust 2 ." 

Such was the state of Brazil some years ago, when M. d'Orbiguy 
travelled through it. Has it changed since then ? We shall see by 
the more recent works of M. Kidder, who, like the former, resided 
some time in the country : 

" The favourable position and the vast extent of the Brazilian 
Empire must always secure for it a prominent place in the eyes of 
the world. 

" The internal resources of the empire are such as might be 
expected from its favoured position and extent of territory. Nature, 
who enriched Brazil with the most precious minerals, has been still 
more prodigal of her gifts in the vegetable kingdom. 

"Brazil combines all that is beautiful, rich, and magnificent in 
Nature, with the blessing of an agreeable and healthy clim ate . But 
at present it suffers severely from two causes: firstly, the embar- 
rassed state of the finances; and, secondly, the want of a free and 
intelligent population. 

ff These evils have in some respects a common origin. The 
revenues of the empire are derived almost exclusively from heavy 
duties levied upon trade. Unfortunately, the nation has no ma- 
nufactures that require a tariff to protect their interest; and, without 



1. D'Orbigny, vol. i, p. 584. — 2. idem, p. 25i. 



71 



the assistance of some skilful mind, years, if not ages, must elapse 
before the resources of that immense empire will be fully de- 
veloped. 

ff It is true that the ancient system of absolutism no longer exists, 
which scarcely allowed a stranger to set foot on the Brazilian terri- 
tory; but very little progress has been made since, or whence the 
necessity of hiring Europeans to settle in one of the most enchanting 
countries of the New World? And why is the number of immi- 
grants, who land yearly in all the ports of Brazil., less than the 
average of the monthly arrivals in the port of New York alone? It 
is easy to answer : there are, in these matters, radical defects in the 
policy of the country. 

ff It is painful, yet true, to observe that the present regulations 
of the Brazilian Government tend rather to prevent, than to 
encourage, immigration. These regulations are jealous, illiberal, 
and degrading. 

f $ One would naturally suppose that the Irish Catholics would 
rather immigrate to a Catholic country than to one colonised by 
Protestants. Facts prove, on the contrary, that Catholic immigrants 
find more toleration amongst Protestants than even in a country pro- 
fessing their own faith. Various plans, both public and private, 
have been formed to encourage immigration to Brazil, but they 
will all prqve abortive, until the principles of perfect toleration, 
prevail in the country. I am aware that the Constitution tolerates, 
all religions, and that very liberal sentiments are professed by 
enlightened and educated Brazilians generally • but the lower 
classes, particularly the Portuguese and their immediate descen- 
dants, have a mass of national prejudice and bigotry of their own 
to overcome, before the position of foreign colonists can be at all 
pleasant amongst them. 

" Besides, it appears they prefer the system of settling foreign- 
ers in distinct communities, to that of encouraging them to inter- 
mingle with the inhabitants. These colonies have seen little or 
no prosperity. But what is especially wanting in ail parts of 
Brazil is, a sufficient number of practical industrious mechanics, 
from no matter what nation ; these would be of great use to the 
country. 

" The day ought ardently to be desired when Brazil shall be able 
to dispense with special exemptions, and, what is worse, lotteries, 
as a means of promoting her manufactures. 

i( It is generally known that notwithstanding all the laws, re- 
gulations, conventions, and treaties, for the prevention of the 



72 



slave trade, it is still carried on between the coasts of Africa and 
Brazil. 

"The subject of education in this empire is one of great and 
increasing interest ; but the people being constrained to bear the 
burden in the shape of an involuntary tax, have none of their sym- 
pathies enlisted in favour of the schools, and too often neglect to 
take advantage of them when established. 

" Complaints are made in all the provinces of the want of com- 
petent teachers ; a want that will doubtless continue to be felt until 
more liberal salaries are paid for their services. 

" Another serious obstacle to the progress of education is the 
almost universal want of suitable school-books. In certain parts of 
the interior, children are taught to read from manuscripts. Any- 
thing printed is very rare and very wretched. A newspaper or a 
book which finds its way to the school becomes, in a manner, public 
property, and is passed from hand to hand as an acquisition from 
which all, by the common laws of humanity, are entitled to derive 
some sort of benefit. 

" Moreover, it is to be feared that the most serious obstacles are 
to be found in the mind and manners of the great mass of the 
people. Their tastes are those of other times : their highest ambition 
of intellectual enjoymentis associated with the dull excitement of the 
f est as. What degrades them still more is the spiritual subjection 
in which they are held by men who are jealous of improvements, 
and who resist every effort in its behalf as a scandalous innovation. 

" In corroboration of these remarks may be quoted the words 
of a distinguished Brazilian statesman, uttered before the Legisla- 
tive Assembly : 'As to the civilization of the Brazilian people, 
almost nothing, unfortunately, has been done. A narrow strip of 
land along the coast alone enjoys the blessing of civilization, while, 
in the interior, our people are still plunged in the grossest barbar- 
ism/ Further he adds : ( We have been unable to remedy the 
evil, nor can anything be done without the aid of a moral and 
enlightened clergy/ 

"There are few subjects on which Brazilian writers express them- 
selves with greater unanimity of opinion than on the state of religion 
in the country. Laymen and ecclesiastics, officers of the state, men 
of business, and politicians, all agree in representing the condition 
and prospects of religion as low as they are unpromising. 

Monachism is on the decline, the number of secular priests is 
diminishing, the churches are falling to ruins, and the spirit and 
principles of infidelity are already disseminated far and wide, and 



73 

this in a country peopled by the descendants of Inquisitors, and in 
which, from the period of its discovery, the Roman Catholic reli- 
gion has held absolute sway. " 

The following statements are borrowed from the Report of the 
Minister of Justice and Ecclesiastical Affairs to the Legislative As- 
sembly of 1843 : 

"The retrograde movement of our clergy is well known; the 
necessity of adopting measures to remedy such an evil is also evident. 
On the 9th of September, 1842, the Government addressed in- 
quiries on this subject to the bishops and capitular vicars. Although 
complete answers have not yet been received from all of them, the 
following particulars are certified : 

" The want of priests who would devote themselves to the 
cure of souls, or even come forward as candidates, is surprising. 
In the province of Para, there are parishes which, for twelve years 
and upwards, have been without a pastor. The district of the river 
Negro, containing about fourteen settlements, has but one priest; 
that of the river Solimoens is similarly circumstanced. In the 
three camarcas of Belem, and the Upper and Lower Amazon, there 
are thirty-six vacant parishes. At Maranham, twenty-five churches 
have several times been designated as wanting curates, and not a 
single candidate has applied for either of the vacant places. 

ec The Bishop of San-Paulo gives a similar account of vacant 
churches in his diocese; and the diocese of Guyaba is no exception 
to the rule ; not a single church is provided with a curate having 
a fixed residence ; and those priests who officiate as vicars treat the 
efforts of the bishop to instruct and improve them with great 
indifference. 

" In the bishopric of Rio-Janeiro most of the churches are supplied 
with pastors, but a great number of them only temporarily. This 
diocese embraces four provinces, but during the last nine years not 
more than five or six priests have been ordained annually, and, 
even of these, few devote themselves to their pastoral duties. 
Either they turn their attention to secular pursuits as a means of 
procuring themselves more comfort, emolument, and respect, or 
they look out for chaplaincies and other situations which offer equal 
or superior inducements, without subjecting them to the literary 
examination, the trouble, and the expense necessary to secure an 
ecclesiastical benefice. In short, there are in Brazil elements of 
disorder which grow up and strengthen under the shelter of firm 
bulwarks built for them by ignorance, superstition, intolerance, 
and vice. " 



74 

But here we leave the two Americas. The documents and the 
evidence brought forward on the trial are too explicit to nee(l any 
commentary. The defender of a good cause may be silent after the 
statement of facts : we rely Qn the force of truth. Let us now leave 
the New World to study the Old ; and let us begin by comparing 
Scotland with Ireland 1 . 

1 We have said nothing of slavery, because our task is not to judge, 
but to compare. If any one could think of making it in this 
place a subject of reproach to the United States, we should have a 
right to ask whether it was the English Protestants or the Catholic 
Spaniards who introduced slavery into America? — The Roman 
Catholics ! To which of the markets of America do the slave-ships 
carry their cargo of human flesh ? — To Catholic Cuba, to Catholic 
Brazil ! And where is the entrance of this cargo so positively 
forbidden that it is not even attempted? — In the Protestant 
United States, which were the first, in 1808, to decree this interdic- 
tion. Where, at the present day, is slavery completely and 
seriously abolished ? — In half the States of the Protestant Union, 
where the negroes are free, and where the whites are striving to 
obtain the emancipation of their brethren in the rest of the States ! 
Where are the slaves best treated? M. de Tocqueville will reply : 
"What proves that the singular mildness of the Americans is 
principally owing to their social condition, is the way in which they 
treat their slaves. There is probably no colony in the New World 
where, upon the whole, the physical condition of the negro is less 
hard than in the United States" (Tocqueville, vol. iv, pp. 8 and 9.) 



ROMAN CATHOLIC IRELAND 

AND 

PROTESTANT SCOTLAND 

COMPARED. 



We have seen how, in the two Americas, religions faith is one of 
the most powerful causes in the development of the morality, 
intelligence, and well-being of a nation. What is true in the New 
World is also true in the Old, and especially respecting Ireland and 
Scotland. 

The reader may here, however, raise an objection which we shall 
anticipate. May not the distance which separates moral, educated, 
and prosperous Scotland from debased, ignorant, and miserable 
Ireland, be explained by the respective histories of the two nations? 
Although united to the same capital, placed under the same firma- 
ment and subject to the same laws, have not the two countries been 
connected with England under very different auspices? Is not 
Scotland simply an annexed kingdom; while Ireland is a conquered 
country, which was for a long time oppressed by the conqueror? 

There is some truth in this remark. We shall take this differ- 
ence into consideration with a view to relieve Ireland from a part 
of her responsibility. The difference in the origin of the two sisters, 
and in the treatment they have received from the mother country, 
is not, however, a sufficient explanation of the moral distance which 
separates them. We shall go further : the difference in the conduct 



70 



of England, in regard to the two nations, has not always been in 
favour of Scotland. If, indeed, it ever was the case, it is not at 
present. For more than half a century the conduct of Great 
Britain towards Ireland has been greatly changed. England makes 
enormous sacrifices for Ireland, and none for Scotland ; and Ireland, 
which we are about to compare with Scotland, is not that of former 
times, but the nation of the present day. 

However, it may be insisted, if the objection does not acquit 
Roman Catholic Ireland, it does not the less blame Protestant 
England, which persecuted her. We do not think it does ; and an 
obvious reflection will convince the reader of it. 

England has only been Protestant about three hundred years, 
while more than seven centuries have elapsed since the conquest of 
Ireland : the reproaches which are directed against England for 
her long persecutions are, therefore, applicable to the Roman Ca- 
tholic England of a former age. 

Great Britain, we know, persevered even after her adhesion to 
her new faith in oppressing Ireland : but is it to be expected that 
the policy of a nation shall change suddenly, and her new principles 
penetrate into her actions from the very instant they are proclaimed? 
In the moral conversions of individuals, do we not see for a long 
time the traces of their old characters? What may reasonably be 
expected of a people as of an individual is, not that he shall change 
his morals in a certain time, but that he shall change them gra- 
dually in such a way as that, after a period which it does not belong 
to us to fix, especially in regard to a people, the change shall be 
complete and satisfactory : now, has not this change for the better 
in the conduct of England taken place ? Have not the bad laws, 
after falling into desuetude , been repealed ? Have not the eccle- 
siastical taxes which were condemned by the whole nation been 
abolished by the State ? Have not the episcopal sees of the Anglican 
Church been reduced in number? Has not Catholic emancipation 
been voted by Parliament? Finally, has not England endowed a 
Roman Catholic college in Ireland, national schools, and given 
assistance of different kinds to the priest? Yes : the answer in the 
affirmative makes it, then, only equitable to judge of Protestant 
England, not by the actions of her infancy, but by the conduct of 
her mature age. 

Moreover, another answer can be given to the objection : If per- 
secution prevents the development of the natural good fruits of 
Catholicism in Ireland, why did it not smother those of Protestant- 
ism in France ? Was not Louis XIV. as severe as Cromwell ? Were 



/ 1 

not the dragonnades as oppressive as the taxes ? And yet the 
French Protestants have struggled victoriously with these difficul- 
ties, and prospered at home and abroad. "From the commence- 
ment of the seventeenth century/' says the Revue Britanniqne, 
" there is no misfortune or persecution which the Protestants have 
not had to support. Amidst many dangers and sufferings, while 
excluded from all public employments, deprived of their civil 
rights, trodden down into the lowest grades, they have taken a great 
and glorious part in the progress of their country, in industry, in 
science, in intelligence, and in civilization. In 1787, when the 
paternal justice of Louis XVI., and in 1789 the decrees of the 
Constituent Assembly, restored to them their rights as men and 
citizens, they returned to their natural positions in the highest 
ranks of French society. Their political emancipation found them 
prepared to fulfil all the duties which a free country imposes upon 
its children, and to merit the honours which it accords to them. 1 " 
Is there not in this difference in the destinies of Catholics and 
Protestants, equally persecuted, an indication that, in the first case, 
the persecution was employed against error, which was in the end 
vanquished ; and, in the second, against the truth, which is always 
victorious? 

Let us, at any rate, suppose that Scotland, in the protection of 
her religion, has enjoyed a concession refused to Ireland ; Ireland 
has over Scotland advantages of various kinds : a climate more 
agreeable, a soil more fertile, a geographical position and an in- 
sular form more favourable to commerce. In the comparison of 
their degrees of prosperity, these circumstances are compensations 
for disadvantages. 

Moreover, to render our parallel more irreproachable, after com- 
paring Ireland with Scotland, we shall compare Ireland with Ire- 
land : the Protestant North with the Catholic South of Ireland. 
We shall have here the same conditions of prosperity; with the 
lands, the administration, and the country, the same. The differ- 
ence of climate and of fertility will be in favour of the South, 
where Nature has cut out harbours much superior to those of the 
North, and far more convenient for the wants of commerce. 

After all, even admitting that in some respects the lot of Scot- 
land has been better than that of Ireland, will the difference suffice 
to explain the superiority of the first of these two countries over the 
second, without taking their respective religions into the account? 



1. Revue Britannique, July, August, 1848, [). 413. 



78 

We do not think it, and we hope that the following pages will suf- 
fice to convince the reader of it. 

This preliminary question settled, we shall enter upon the 
matter in hand ? and compare Ireland with Scotland in various 
respects. 

The Irishman is first of all an Irishman, a patriot. The Romish 
clergy have worked on this element of his character until it has 
become, at present, impossible to say whether religious principles 
or national pride has most influence over his actions. 

The dexterous combination of patriotism and religion reveals 
already the immense power which the Irish clergy must exercise 
over the people; and it must be added that this power is doubled 
by the very nature of Catholicism . The priest, in fact, holds a 
great place in the Romish Church ; he is the dispenser of pardon by 
the confessional; the operator of salvation by mass; and the 
infallible interpreter of the Sacred Code : he identifies religion 
with himself until he ends by becoming himself religion and sal- 
vation incarnate ! From the double circumstance then of the con- 
fusion of politics and religion, and that his creed makes him the 
representative of the Deity, the Irish priest, in his domination over 
the faithful, becomes omnipotent. It is then into his domicile that 
we ought to go to search for the mould into which he is pleased to 
cast the Irishman. By studying the master, we shall prepare our- 
selves to understand the pupil; and let us look then, before any- 
thing else, at the Roman Catholic clergy : 

" The Catholic religion, " says M. de Beaumont, "has a public 
existence in Ireland; her temples are erected, her clergy organized, 
her ceremonies performed in open day : she has four archbishops, 
two thousand five hundred churches, and two thousand and seventy- 
four priests or vicars 1 . 

If you add to these the college at Maynooth, and the national 
schools, you have a considerable body. Let us now see to what 
purposes it is applied. The Irish priest is, above all, a politician. 
He is both a tribune and a preacher ; as a tribune he is described 
by M. de Beaumont : " No election can take place in Ireland 
without the clergy giving their advice if not their commands to the 
people. The clergy take a share in all the affairs of the country ; 
they attend the meetings, and make many speeches. The priest is 
changed into the demagogue, and the very tongue which insisted 
upon the duty of giving to Caesar the things which are Caesar's, pro- 



i. De Beaumont, vol. i, p. 48. 



79 



claims aloud that every good Catholic ought to vote against the Pro- 
testants. Nobody now denies, in Ireland, that the success of the 
elections is entirely dependent upon the influence of the priests, 
who hold in their hands the souls of the people." 

M. Pichat makes us acquainted with the priest as a preacher. 
He says : " To obtain an idea of the authority exercised by the 
Irish priest, we must enter his humble chapel upon a day on which 
he has announced his intention of talking to them about a private 
affair interesting to them all. The congregation is crowded, for 
the Irish know that the priest is sure to make them weep or laugh, 
and perhaps both. The Irish like the drama at the church as well 
as on the platform, and to succeed the orator must be pathetic and 
comic in turns, and sometimes a buffoon. The church is therefore 
thronged; Father Kavanagh, in passing through the crowd, gives 
a few slight taps to two or three roguish urchins who try to hold 
him by his surplice; then he ascends the pulpit, makes the sign 
of the cross, and gives out his text : * Blessed is he who gives his 
money to the needy.' " 

" e These words, my brethren, are taken from St. Paul, who, we 
may say between ourselves, knew that a friend in need was a friend 
indeed. The text, at any rate, is very clear. The Apostle meant to 
say that we ought to give our money, when we have any, be it well 
understood, for the text is not made for him who has none, and who 
with an empty purse may whistle at thieves. I wish that none of 
you, my dear parishioners, may ever hum that tune upon the day 
when your priest has need of a pair of new boots (general laughter), 
because I know you are too good Christians to allow him to go about 
with holes in his boots, when the fat parson his neighbour, with 
three chins and jolly red cheeks, makes his high heels ring upon the 
pavement like an officer of dragoons (renewed burst of laughter) 

m t i suppose a man has no money; I may be right, or I may be 
wrong; but, to make myself sure of it, I shall choose a logical 
example — Peter Donovan ! ' 

" { Fm here, yer reverence ! ' replies the parishioner who has 
been called by his name. 

u ' Look here, Peter, I suppose now you have no money; ani I 
right or wrong?' 

<e 6 Oh! Fd be sorry to put yer reverence in the wrong, but 1 
must. ' 

" ' How much, then, have you in your pocket, Peter?' 
(e ' Without looking, I may tell yer reverence, since you press me 
so closely, that I would have had ten shillings if I hadn't to take 



SO 



out of it the price of an ounce of tobacco which I bought in coming 
to the church. ' 

" ' Very well,, Peter, hand them to me just to serve as an illus- 
tration. ' 

"Peter Donovan made a grimace, and prior to putting his hands 
into his pockets said cunningly, 'Will yer reverence give me 
leave to quote also a proverb : A fool and his money are soon 
parted. I see well enough you're going to play me a trick. ' 

" ' Give him the money, Peter, ' cried a hundred voices, ' give 
him the money, you niggard ! What are you afraid of? - 

" \ Here it is, here it is/ cried Peter at last, c l would not for all 
I have offend yer reverence. ' 

" ' Thank you, Peter, or rather, it is a stingy fellow like you who 
ought to thank me. Must I employ all the arts of eloquence to 
draw out of you a few pieces of vile metal? Are ye not ashamed 
of clinging to your money in that w<ay? Thank me then for the 
good action I intend to do in your name with your nine shillings. 
Alas ! it will perhaps be your first, you cold Christian that you are; 
but I hope that when you have tasted the happiness of being chari- 
table, you will not stop short there, w-hich would not be logical/ 

" The roars of laughter now become universal, and the merry 
priest laughs like the rest at the success of his trick/' 

"Is this an imaginary sermon that I have transcribed? No :I 
have only abridged and Frenchified a little in style a scene of real 
life, the truth of which can be verified by the author from whom I 
have taken it 1 ." 

We do not think this a fair specimen of the preaching of all the 
Roman Catholic priests in Ireland. We are willing to suppose the 
picture is too highly coloured, but it is given to us as a specimen. 
After passing a sponge over it, and removing the exaggerations, 
enough will remain to give us a poor idea of the Irish Roman 
Catholic pulpit. 

Let us follow the priest in the discharge of his ministerial func- 
tions, always according to the accounts of Roman Catholic writers. 
Let us go to a marriage. "The priest," says M. Prevost, "cele- 
brates the ceremony of marriage in the village church ; and, it ap- 
pears, in most of the counties requests the husband, after the mass, 
to give his wife the kiss of peace. The new married couple kiss, 
sans faeon, at the very foot of the altar, and the joking lookers-on 
do not scruple to criticize at the very moment how 7 they do it. 



i. Pichat, pp. 317 to 324. 



81 



Nothing pleases them better than to make the bride blush by their 
jokes. Some priests however, now-a-days, oppose the old national 
custom , and 1 have heard of one who gave a vigorous cuff to a hus- 
band who was about to kiss his wife in the church After the 

national dances of jigs and reels, come country-dances, in which 
there are the most numerous performers. The priest is always 
present: he speaks to every body, and sometimes handles the 
fiddlestick or blows the bag-pipe, to the great satisfaction of his 
flock 

From a marriage let us pass to a funeral. " When the defunct/' 
says the same writer, "has left a large sum for his interment, the 
chamber set apart for the wake is abundantly supplied with pro- 
visions, tobacco, and whiskey ; and then, in the intervals of the 
chants and ceremonies, the men and women, smoking and talking, 
dine plentifully and drink to the memory of him who, alas! alone, 

of all the company, cannot partake of the feast The wakes 

may last three or four days, or as long as "there is anything to eat 

or drink Dirges and lamentations are kept up incessantly 

upon the road to the grave-yard; and 1 assure you a traveller feels 
considerably astonished when he meets suddenly, in a lonely valley, 
a procession in which everybody, man, woman, and child, send 
doleful cries up to Heaven. 

"If unfortunately two funerals take place at the same time, and 
the t wo processions take the same road to the same cemetery, scan- 
dalous scenes sometimes occur. At first, each procession quickens 
its pace in order to enter before the other; but if they chance to 
meet at the gate, they form into two hostiles parties, who begin by 
abusing each other, and always end by coming to blows. Vanity 
is not the only cause of these deplorable collisions ; for, according to 
an old tradition, it is solemnly declared that he who enters last 
into a grave-yard is forced to be the servant of the rest of the dead, 
and he must fetch their drink and obey their commands until a 
new arrival relieves him from his humiliating functions V 

In this place we shall mention the part which the Irish priest 
takes in a multitude of superstitions; and show him, for instance, 
at the Purgatory of Saint Patrick, where the pilgrims, on paying 
for it, obtain the privilege of submitting to severe penances, 
particularly that of passing twenty-four hours in a cellar without 
food, drink, or sleep, for fear the devil should come as he had done 
before, and carry off the cellar and every thing in it; but as the 

1. PrevOSt, p. 93. — 2. Idem, pp. 193 to 195. 

6 



82 



subject is inexhaustible , we shall limit ourselves to two short 
quotations : 

"In the ancient abbey of Burrishoob we had pointed out to us a 
large hole, full of the bones of the monks of the abbey. I observed 
with astonishment that most of the skulls which appeared upon 
the surface were black with smoke. One of our guides gave me 
the following explanation of it : c The peasants of the neighbour- 
hood have/ he said, ' great confidence in these relics of the 
monks, and when any one falls ill they harry off for a skull to 
Burrishoob. The drink or soup prescribed by the doctor is boiled 
in it, and it rarely happens that the patient is not preserved by it. 
After the cure, the skull is faithfully carried back, and restored 
to its place V 

" Whilst I was surveying the humble grave-stones, ' tumuli/ 
or 'cairns' upon the road from Cong, I saw a poor woman at 
prayer, and laying prostrate for some minutes, after which she 
took up a Hint, and threw it into a cavity which I had not previously 
remarked. 1 examined the tumulus or ' cairn' more attentively, 
and I observed that every one of them had a similar hole; my 
guide told me that the hole was called the window or bowl of pur- 
gatory. Every time that any one comes to kneel before a pyramid 
or heap of stones, it is usual to deposit a flint in the bowl of the 
dead for whom they pray, and when the bowl is full it is a sign of 
the deliverance of the soul from the torments of purgatory 2 ." 

It is astonishing that any clergy, no matter of what creed, should 
have so little regard for the dignity of her ministry. But a French 
writer, who is a sincere friend of Catholicism, informs us how this 
happens to the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland : " The Irish 
priests, " says Baron d'Haussez , ex-minister of Charles X, " are 
recruited from the lowest classes of society ; too poor to have been 
able to acquire the education necessary for their office, they make 
up for the deficiency by a blind fanaticism, which they most dan- 
gerously communicate to those classes whose religious sentiments, 
being incapable of enlightenment, they can only inflame V 

By the side of this clergy, which represents the Romish religion 
in Ireland, let us place the Protestant religion in Scotland. 
M. Custine, a Roman Catholic, is the person who speaks as follows : 
"It may be said almost literally that the whole population of the 
Scottish towns assemble morning and evening to hear with pro- 
found attention moral and reasonable discourses upon the Gospel, 

1. Prevost, p. 389. — 2. Idem, p. 420. — 3. Idem, p. 197. 



83 



and listen to the sounds of pious psalms, which dispose the soul to 
contemplation. These men are wearisome when amusing them- 
selves, hut they are affecting in prayer. 

ef l am too good a Catholic hy habit and conviction to be suspected 
of partiality in the praises which I give to the Presbyterian worship ; 
but T have also too much good faith not to avow the respect which 
every Christian communion inspires, when its precepts are ob- 
served by the whole community. 

"The first prejudice which any one receives against a doctrine 
comes generally from the lukewarmness of those who profess it. In 
this point of view the Presbyterian and even the Anglican religion 
recommend themselves to the esteem of foreigners. They ask with 
astonishment what is the authority which understands so well how 
to make itself obeyed? It is not here, as amongst certain con- 
tinental nations, a few women more sensitive, or weaker, or 
stronger than the rest of the world, who keep alive the traditions 
of true piety; it is a whole people, without exception, who are eager 
to avow T publicly their submission to the public faith. 

" The sentiment of religion does not appear to be less sincere in 
being protected by the civil power. When I see a Scottish pulpit, I 
cannot prevent myself from being moved, and I bow with venera- 
tion before it, as the source whence have llow r ed the virtues I have 
admired in a nation essentially consequent and conscientious. The 
Scottish Reformers avoided scrupulously calling to their aid the help 
of imagination and sentiment; nothing, in their austere doctrines, 
speaks to the senses, nothing seduces the heart; every thing is 
there to subdue the mind by mind alone ; every thing is inward 
worship ; conviction is all in all ; and the severe language spoken is 
that of reason *. " 

Such are, according to Roman Catholic authorities, the sources 
whence, in Scotland and in Ireland, the people derive their morals. 
Let us see what are the streams which flow from them; and 
especially let us listen, in regard to the latter country, to what is 
said by a zealous defender of the Irish Catholics. 

M. de Beaumont says : "It would be to contradict well-known 
facts to deny the vices of the Irish. The Irishman is lazy, false, 
intemperate, and violent. He has notoriously a sort of invincible 
aversion for the truth. Even when he is disinterested, between 
truth and falsehood it may be calculated that he will prefer false- 
hood. Every thing he says he supports with an oath, and he swears 



t. Custine, pp. 405 to 407. 



always upon his honour: Upon my honour, upon my word; familiar 
phrases in the mouths of persons who do not speak the truth. 
His repugnance for work is not less singular. What he does he 
does without taste, care, or zeal; and he is more frequently idle. 
Many Irishmen who are miserable add to their misery by their 
indolence; to alleviate their misfortunes nothing more is necessary 
than a little industry and activity; but nothing can drag them out 
of their apathy and indifference ; they seem to like their misery , and 
they lie down in it and remain in it, in spite of the distress and 
wants which they have ceased to feel. 

"These are deplorable vices; but there are others which are 
terrible. Violent and vindictive, the Irishman displays, in his 
deeds of vengeance, the most ferocious cruelty. We have seen how 
the farmer, who has been expelled from his farm, or who has had 
his goods seized for tithes, proceeds to reprisals characterised by the 
most ferocious barbarism. No one can remember without horror 
Ihe tortures which he invents in his savage fury. Sometimes 
incendiarism and assassination do not suffice, and he must inflict 
longevous agonies upon his victim. He is often as unjust as cruel 
in his fury, and he wreaks his vengeance upon persons entirely 
innocent of the injury he has sustained. It is not only upon the 
squire and the parson that he takes satisfaction for the severities for 
which they alone are responsible. His violence makes him rush 
upon the agent of the proprietor, upon the new-come farmer, or 
upon the clergyman's lawyer; sometimes he goes still farther 
away from the author of his wrongs, and violently abducts the wives 
and daughters of these individuals, and dishonours them to punish 
fathers and husbands who are in no way culpable l ." 

" What happens when a factory is set up in Ireland ? The work- 
men, who have at first consented to work for small wages, are no 
sooner installed in their new position than they forthwith club 
together for a rise of wages, and applying to industry the practices 
of Whiteboyism, arbitrarily fix the price of a day's work, threaten 
with terrible penalties the master who pays a smaller salary, 
and the workman who consents to receive it; the threats of this 
barbarous code not being empty menaces, the punishment usually 
following the offence very closely 2 . 

< ' It is difficult to form an idea of the number of cattle which are 
killed or mutilated maliciously every year ; the woods and buildings 
which are burnt, the grass dug up and turned over, and the trees 



1. Do Beaumont, vol. i, p. 350, etc. — 2. idem, p. lie. 



which are cut, from sheer spite or vengeance. In 1833, 1 find that 
in the province of Minister more offences were committed with a 
design to injure the landlords than with a view to benefit the wrong- 
doers. Thus, of the whole number of crimes, while there were 
59 thefts, I noticed that 178 offences were dictated by the instincts 
of brutal and vindictive violence *. " 

It might be imagined that such barbarism is exercised only 
against the English and the rich, whom the poor Irishman has been 
taught to regard as his enemies; but it is not so, and this bar- 
barism is found in their whole conduct and manners, against their 
countrymen as much as against foreigners, in their pleasures as 
well as in their affairs. 

"•'On returning to the house of Mr. W...," M. Raumer tells us, 
"I saw a distant crowd, and I expected to find, as in Scotland, an 
itinerant preacher; but they told me it was an Irish game. Two 
men, naked to their waists, were fighting, not like the noble 
Greeks of the Olympia, nor like the noble and trained boxers of 
England, but with great whips. After they were both bruised, co- 
vered with blood, and almost skinned alive, one of them fell sense- 
less in the gutter. To take him up by the arms and legs, carry him 
to dry ground, open his mo uth to pour into it half a bottle of brandy, 
and throw a bucket of water over him ; all these things were 
accomplished in a minute. After that, the furious combatants 
were excited to renew the fight like mad dogs. Meanwhile, the 
judges of the field were displaying an activity incredible; they 
made room by distributing right and left amongst the crowd lashes 
of their whips, the least of which would have made me keep my 
bed for several weeks, but which have not here more effect than if 
any one amongst us was to say : ' Will you be good enough to stand 
back a little out of the way V 

Prince Muskau has published a piquant description of Donny- 
brook Fair. He says : 

" Nothing could be more national. The misery, filth, and noise 
everywhere equalled the joy and turbulence with which they gave 
themselves up to the meanest pleasures. I saw them consuming 
viands and drinks which forced me to turn away my head to con- 
ceal the disgust I felt. The heat and dust, the crowd and the 
stench, were really intolerable : but the Irish did not appear to be 
aware of them. Several hundreds of tents chokefull of people, 
were erected, surmounted with rags of different colours instead 



1. DeJBeaumonl, vol. i, p._169. — 2. Raumer, pp. 307, 308. 



of flags. Tliere were some which had no other sign than a cross 
and a walnut Kernac. The sign over the door of one of them 
was a dead and half rotten cat. In the midst of all this,, the meanest 
mountebanks, covered with old tinsels, displayed their tricks in the 
wind, and wearied themselves in singing and grimacing with 
most frightful zeal. A third of the public was staggering about, or 
lay upon the ground dead drunk, while the rest eat, screamed, or 
fought V 

And as if on purpose to prove that these manners derive their 
origin from religious truth : " The Irish people/' M. d'Haussez 
assures us, "is one of the nations most attached to their practices 
of religion, and one of those the least enlightened in regard to its 
veritable spirit ; one of the most brave, and yet the most inclined to 
base and cruel acts of revenge; the most accustomed to privations, 
and the least sober; the most persisting in its resolutions, and the 
most frivolous in its designs; the most willing to work, and yet the 
laziest. It may be said of the Irishman that he has always a vice 
to spoil a virtue. In his character may be found both the Gascon 
and Beotian. 

"Their passions are quick and unsubmissive to contradiction, 
are easily excited, and soon degenerate into rage. Hence extreme 
resolutions, the execution of which is never suspended by reflection; 
anger is the adviser they consult, and violence the means to which 
they resort most willingly ; thus they are guilty of many faults, 
the first effect of which is to aggravate their own miseries. 

"By the oddities and contradictions of which it is composed, the 
Irish character may be considered at once as the cause and the 
effect of the state of things which has been described V 

" The number of troops, " says M. Dill, " stationed in Ireland 
now for many years is surprising : the annual average of the last 
eight years has been upwards of 25,000 men ! Thus, to control 
7,000,000 of professing Christians, it requires near one-fourth of 
that magnificent army Avhich is found sufficient (our native Indian 
troops excepted) to control the greatest empire on which the sun 
ever shone, containing 156,000,000 of subjects and tributaries; of 
whom 120,000,000 are heathens and Mohammedans ! And if to 
this military force we add 13,000 constabulary and metropolitan 
police, we have in this small island a constant army of occupation 
of 38,000 men ! 

(i You exclaim : Can such a force be required? at least must it 

1. Saint-Germain Leduc, p. 258. — 2. D'Haussez, pp. 225 to 227. 



87 



not supersede the necessity of jails and gibbets? Alas! it is a 
country of prisons as well as garrisons. There are in Ireland 155 
jails and bridewells; near 700 law courts, from assizes to petty 
sessions; and -10.000 persons ministering justice, from the judge 
to the bailiff. And can this array of tribunals be required ? Enter 
any southern court whatever; mark the crowds who throng the 
building and hang round the door; see the piles of indictments, 
processes and summonses; observe the prodigious mass of business 
transacted during one single term; and then you may form some 
conception of the gross amount of law going on continually over 
the land, with all its disorganising influences. Yes, and though 
weeks are frequently spent at the assizes of one single county, yet 
the business is often left unfinished, and special commissions are 
required to relieve the crowded prisons. In fact, our chief pub- 
lic buildings, in addition to poorhouses, are jails and court-houses, 
and our most flourishing business is that of lawyers and solicitors. 

" Again, in Great Britain, with thrice the population of Ireland, 
and this consisting largely of the depraved manufacturing classes, 
there were in 1850, only 31,281 committals, while there were in 
Ireland in the same year, 33,326, or upwards of 3 to 1 ! Yet this 
gives no accurate idea of the proportion of actual crime in these 
two countries; for conspiracy against the laws is in many parts of 
Ireland so perfect, that even assassinations take place in open day, 
within view of the people, and not only do they not inform, but 
so screen the assassin that he often eludes the utmost vigilance of 
the police. Nor is a less mournful fact brought out by the relative 
proportion of convictions. The same conspiracy against law and 
justice appears in our very courts; scenes of perjury the most re- 
volting are common on the witness table; and in party cases, the 
frequent expression even of jurors, before entering their box at all, 
is that they will " eat their boots 33 with hunger before they find 
against the prisoner ! Hence the striking fact, that while in Bri- 
tain, of the above 31,281 committals, there were 23,900 convic- 
tions, or nearly three-fourths, of the 33,326 prisoners committed 
in Ireland, there were only 17,108 convicted, or not much over 
one half K " 

w As in general the Irishman does not like work, he has not con- 
sequently the zeal and the attention to details of the laborious and 
persevering man. He is lazy, deceitful, intemperate, and inclined 
to violence, and is particularly pleased when out of work. His in- 

1. Dill, pp. 74 to 76= 



88 



dolence increases his misery, and prevents his being industrious of 
his own accord. With a little more application to work, he might 
improve his condition most essentially, instead of which he aban- 
dons himself to his lot, and gives way to apathy, in spite of the 
privations which his negligence imposes upon him. The most 
simple ideas of right and wrong, of just and unjust, are confused 
and often entirely erroneous in the minds of the lowest classes. 
The Irishman does not always love the truth; he Hatters his su- 
periors, and is rude and insolent to his inferiors. Secret associa- 
tions, such as those of the Ribbonmen, preach pillage, incendiarism, 
and murder in different parts of the country. United by oaths, the 
violation of which is punished with death, these secret societies 
give themselves up to the most cruel excesses, and escape punish- 
ment by the vengeance which they threaten against the witnesses 
who may inform against them. Their bands are spread over the 
whole island, and form the centres of all the commotions which 
disturb the peace of the provinces V 

It is especially in agrarian crimes that the daring of the Irish- 
man is shown: "The characteristic trait of these crimes is that 
the mass of the population seem to sympathize with the criminal. 
This sympathy is an indirect complicity which encourages and pro- 
tects the homicide, the incendiary, and the destroyer of private 
property. One of the witnesses heard upon an inquest said : ' There 
exists a lively sympathy amongst the small farmers with criminals, 
and they endeavour to protect them, calling it opposition to the 
landlord. ' The report adds : We are assured that in consequence 
of that sympathy it is very difficult, as difficult as it can be, to get 
any one to give evidence against an agrarian criminal , and every 
criminal of this kind is sure of a good reception wherever he goes. 
Intimidation is universal in Ireland; for the fear of offending 
somebody, of becoming unpopular, or of being shot, induces people 
to endure things in Ireland which no one would submit to in Eng- 
land for any consideration whatever. It is necessary to notice here 
an observation of Lord Rosse, who, to show that the law has not the 
force in Ireland which it has in England, proves the indirect com- 
plicity of the juries with the accused. On every ten trials for 
murder in England and Scotland, there are, he says, nine con- 
demnations, while there is only one in Ireland 2 ." 

Let us oppose to these Irish morals, formed by Catholicism, those 
which the Reformation has created in Scotland : Let us first hear 



1. Solitaire, pp. 555 to 557. — 2. ikvuc Britarmiquo, 1850, February, p. 382. 



80 



M. Jonnes, a French statistician: "Scotland is a country by 
itself... In its morals are found that puritan rigidness, that Scan- 
dinavian honesty, of which Norway ( a Protestant country) offers 
still in Europe the example and model. 

" The small number of crimes committed in Scotland bears the 
most favourable evidence as to the morality of the inhabitants of 
the country. It is not a gift of civilization, for figures which 
carry us back sixty-eight years , an epoch at which the population 
was still very little advanced, shows that crimes were at that time 
very rare. Howard states that in fourteen years, from 1768 to 
4782, there were in Scotland only 76 persons condemned to death, 
of whom 54- were executed. As the population amounted to 
4,360,000 inhabitants, an average of 5 capital crimes yearly gives 
the result of \ in 252,000. The proportion is now 1 in 350,000. 
Thus, Scotland of the present day has not degenerated. There 
were in former times 4 executions yearly, or 1 in 34-0,000 inha- 
bitants; at the present day there is 4 in 600,000; consequently 
justice has become almost one-half less rigid, and yet the number 
of crimes has diminished V 

"I shall mention a trait of the character of the Scotchman, which 
is the key to his history. There is in the Scotchman something 
interior, grave, reflective, which seems sometimes to resemble 
reserve or pride, but which is rather the firmness of independence 
and liberty. The lofty air and the severe looks show only that 
there is, in their souls, hidden and powerful principles, noble and 
profound passions, which if they were to unchain them would rise 
up and combat as the lion when he is attacked. Christianity has 
penetrated into these men more than any other nation. The 
Christian sap is grafted in them, not as on the feeble descendants 
of the Romans, but as on a young, wild, and vigorous stock which 
grows up finely 2 ." 

"The Scotch are grave but courteous, and they possess to a great 
degree a look of kindness, a demonstration of hospitality, an 
expression of goodness which is always confirmed by a trial of their 
dispositions V 

"Theft, plunder and housebreaking are things unheard of in 
Scotland, and public security is so great that bolts and locks are 
considered unnecessary precautions. They do not think of shutting 
their doors even during the night. Capital punishments are so 
rare that there is only one or two executions yearly in the whole 

1. Jonnes, vol. u, p. 275. — 2. Aublgitf, p. 53. — 3. D'Haussoz, p. 149 to 151. 



90 



kingdom. Every family attends divine service with its servants; 
and, in every house, morning and evening devotions are per- 
formed, while charity to the poor is never forgotten... Coincident 
with the French Revolution, which found much sympathy in the 
middle class, there was a relaxation of morals. Wise and ener- 
getic measures, however, preserved the public spirit of order and 
morality, and each family assumed a certain watch over the con- 
duct of its children. Thus morals were re-established with the 
tranquillity which had been momentarily troubled. To-day, the 
mass of the Scotch population occupy, in regard to morality, a 
distinguished place amongst the most respected nations. The 
occurrence of riots is rare ; the masses of country people seem, in 
cases of unforseen misfortunes, full of resignation, which appears to 
be the result of a feeling of public morality and religion. It was 
thus that, in 1837, entire families became victims of famine rather 
than commit the smallest theft, although they had no reason to 
fear the consequences. " 

Any one might distrust the impressions of travellers or party 
men. But how can they question the facts which we have just 
read, when they are verified by impartial statistics? Let us then 
consult M. de Jonnes when comparing the criminality in Ireland 
and Scotland : 

Accusations of crimes and offences. 

(Average from 1831 to 1835.) 

Scotland 1 in 880 inhabitants. 

Ireland 1 in 460 inhabitants. 

Thus already commitments are, in proportion to the populations, 
nearly twice as numerous in Ireland as in Scotland. Let us pass 
on to the crimes proved and punished : 

Thefts. 

Scotland, from 1834 to 1836, 186 thefts : 1 in 13,000 inhabitants. 
Ireland, from 1834 to 1836, 3,026 thefts : 1 in 2,700 inhabitants. 

Thefts, then, are five times more numerous in Ireland than in 
Scotland ! 

Crimes committed against persons. 
(Average from 1830 to 1835.) 

SCOTLAND. 

Assassinations, 1 in 400,000 inhabitants ; homicides, 1 in 266,000; thefts, 1 in 19,460. 

IRELAND. 

Assassinations, 1 in 107,000 inhabitants; homicides, 1 in 46,000; thefts, 1 in 63,340. 

" Ireland, compared with Scotland, presents the following diffe- 
rences : homicide is six times, assassination four times, and 



91 



thefts, from three to four times, more common in Ireland than in 
Scotland. 

" Offences against public order are so multiplied in Ireland that 
it is necessary to treat them separately : 



Homicides and attempts (in 1832) 224 

Shots fired at persons 211 

Incendiaries 571 

Destruction of houses 87 

Attacks on houses 2,122 

Demands of arms 673 

Illegal oaths 317 

Illegal notices 2,149 



Total 6,374 



' ' These numbers are augmented by smuggling offences, attended 
with violence, against the Excise and Customs : 

Condemnations to death (1804 to 1811). 

Scotland, 1 in 257,000 inhabitants. 
Ireland, 1 in 52,900 inhabitants, 

" The condemnations to death in Ireland are ten times more 
numerous than in Scotland, and executions three times; there is 
consequently : 

In Scotland, 1 individual condemned to death in 235 convicted of crime. 
In Ireland, 1 individual condemned to death in 49 convicted of crime. 

Executions. 

(Average from 1831 to 1835.) 

Scotland 1 in 610,000 inhabitants. 

Ireland 1 in 221.000 inhabitants » . " 

According to Quetelet and other statisticians, the affinity be- 
tween the numbers of the accused and the condemned measures 
the severity of the judges. Following this principle, the law is 
enforced with more rigour in Scotland than in Ireland; for, in the 
first country, more than half of those condemned to death are 
executed, whereas in the second, there is only one in six. 

To sum up, the numbers of accused, condemned, and executed, 
are always much greater in Ireland than in Scotland, and the 
average ratio is three to one! If morality could be counted, it 
ought to be said that there is three times more morality in Scotland 
than in Ireland. 

If religious faith and morals are intimately united, it is not 



i. Jonnes, vol. n, pp. 275, etc, 



92 



always so with morals and intelligence. In treating the first 
question, then , we have necessarily not prejudiced the second. 
Therefore let us compare the two nations in regard to knowledge. 

We have wished to know the names of the illustrious men 
that Ireland has produced. Malte-Brun has furnished us with 
the following list : 

" Boyle enlarged the sphere of physical knowledge * — Steele 
associated his pen with that of Addison ; — Congreve enriched the 
theatrical catalogue with many lively comedies, of which some are 
still played ; — Swift received from Voltaire the name of the Rabe- 
lais of good society; — Sloane, a skilful doctor, studied botany 
with success ; — Bishop Berkely gave himself to the study of 
the exact sciences, and threw new light on metaphysics ; — Sterne, 
by the originality wmich distinguished his novels, acquired an 
European reputation; — Nell made himself known by his light 
and easy poetry; — Goldsmith, as a scholar, historian, and natura- 
list; and lastly Burke, Sheridan, Flood, and many others, who 
shone as orators at the national tribune l . " 

But, asking ourselves afterwards if all these men were Roman 
Catholics, we looked nearer, and we have found that they were 
all Protestants ! 

Undoubtedly we shall not conclude from this that Catholic Ire- 
land does not produce distinguished men. The remembrance of 
Thomas Moore and O'Connell would be there to protest against it. 
But then it must be owned that the circumstance that a French 
writer, when making a list of Irish celebrities, mentions only Pro- 
testant names, is a very remarkable one. 

Nevertheless, the same author explains himself clearly on this 
subject : 

" Ireland, he says, is certainly less enlightened than England, and 
especially Scotland. She has fewer scholars than these two king- 
doms, but about the same number as France. The thing which 
distinguishes it principally from other nations is the kind of 
instruction which is obtained. The great majority of the people, 
being guided by a poor Catholic clergy, who are ill educated and 
full of prejudices, are kept in a state of appalling superstition, the 
only principle of the ignorance with which they are reproached. 

" The elementary instruction of the populous class ought not to 
consist merely in the knowledge of reading and writing. Mora- 
lity ought to teach the Irishman the extent of his duties; religion 



1. MaUc-Brun, pp. 22S, 229. 



03 



&«gh1 to encourage him to fulfil them. Whence can he derive the 
mental knowledge indispensable to his situation, if it is not from 
the hooks destined to enlighten the Christian? The Irish Catholic 
clergy do not permit the people to read the Bible; and it is by 
ridiculous works, destined to perpetuate superstition and ignorance, 
that they mould them into that sort of dependence, which 
makes them nothing but blind instruments of enmity towards 
England, and hypocritical Christians always ready for revolt 1 . 

" The island has only one establishment for ecclesiastical edu- 
cation; it is the Royal College of Saint Patrick, at Maynooth, which 
is conducted by Jesuits, and destined to educate Catholic priests; 
none come out of it but those brought up iu prejudices and pre- 
tensions unfavourable to England 2 . " 

M. de Jonnes enters more into details : " In 1734 there was 
in Ireland 1 scholar in 770 inhabitants; and at the same time in 
Scotland 1 in 250. " 

At present this disproportion does not exist, but it must be 
remarked that the amelioration of Ireland, in this respect, is due to 
the Protestants ; not only because they have created schools for 
their own children, but also because they have opened them for 
Catholics. This can be inferred from the following table, which 
we borrow from M. de Jonnes, showing the state of education in 
Ireland in 1824 : 

" Association for the suppression of vice: .... 226 schools 12,769 scholars. 

Institution of Erasmus Smith 113 — 9,011 — 

Kildare-Street Association 919 — 58,203 — 

London Irish Society 618 — 37,507 — 

Baptist Society 88 — 4,566 — 

Charter Schools 32 — 2,255 — 

Other Protestant schools 123 — 1,550 — 

2,119 125,863 

Catholic schools, supported by nuns 46 schools 7,136 scholars. 

— — by friars 24 — 5,454 — 

Other Catholic schools 352 — 33,825 — 

452 46,415 3." 

If we class the schools, not after the scholars which present 
themselves, but after the societies which support them, we shall 
have : 



For the Protestants, 2,119 schools, 123,863 scholars. 
For the Catholics, 422 — 46,413 — 



1. Malte-Brun, hook lxi, pp. 199 and 200. — 2. Idem, p. 101. — 3. De Jonnes, vol. n, 
p. 326, etc. 



94 



And this at an epoch when the Catholics were three times more 
numerous than the Protestants. 

Since then two circumstances have happened which have mo- 
dified the state of things in a manner honourable to England. 
Government has established numerous schools for the Catholics, and 
a powerful Protestant propagation has organised itself to cover the 
country with benevolent institutions of all kinds. It thus happens 
that everywhere in Ireland instruction is spread to the profit of 
one church, and at the expense of another. But, without dwelling 
upon the Protestant source whence the instruction for the Catholics 
flows, let us look at the extent of it : 

" Of the fourth yart who can read and w T rite, while very many 
are most highly educated, the attainments of the majority are, we 
fear, but slender. In 6 counties and 74 towns, with populations 
ranging from 2,500 to 12,400 each, there was not in 1849 a single 
book-shop ; and in the entire island there was, in proportion to the 
population, only one for every nine wilich then existed in Scotland ! 
While, as to private libraries, it is said that in the greater part of 
Connaught there do not exist as many books as would stock a 
book-shop in a small English town 1 . " 

We might quote documents which sho w that instruction is at 
the, lowest ebb amongst the Irish Catholics ; that there are towns 
of 40,000 inhabitants without a book-shop or a reading-room; that 
there is a million of children destitute of all education ; but, weary 
of the contemplation of such ignorance, we prefer to turn our eyes 
towards a country upon which they may rest more agreeably. 

"May we be permitted/' says a Review, "to stale our conclusions 
in favour of the Scottish race, whom neither difficulties nor in- 
sufficient assistance has induced to lag behind on the march of 
progress. The sacred fire of intellectual ambition has always been 
kept up by that nation, w r hich has always counted so many men 
illustrious in science, literature, and industry; poets like Burns 
and Hogg; inventors like Ferguson and Watts; financiers like 
Paterson and Horner; superior men of all kinds for whom ele- 
mentary education of the parish school proved sufficient. What 
chiefly distinguishes Scotland is the laudable intellectual activity 
of the whole nation, which M. Chambers affirms to be superior to 
the parish schools, and where four-fifths of the population receive 
their elementary education. The Scottish workmen can scientifi- 
cally perfect their professional education, and acquire all sorts of 



i. Dill, p. 72. 



95 



accessory knowledge, in the 4 Mechanic's Institutes; ' a sort of 
club in which they have the use of a library, literary conversa- 
tions, and lectures. Since 1825, these institutions have multiplied 
greatly. The lyceums of working classes are another sort of 
club-schools, supported by small subscriptions, and they give the 
names of ' Unions 9 to a certain number of societies of working 
men, who are associated amongst themselves for mutual aid and 
assistance K " 

What a country!" cries a French traveller, speaking of Scot- 
land; "a country interesting and curious, instructive and orderly, 
rich and well cultivated, rural and picturesque, with its castles, its 
parks, its fields, its rocks, its grand and beautiful lakes. Why it 
would take many volumes to describe it ! Every thing there 
breathes of the opulence of a happy existence 2 . " 

"The Scotchman loves study. He is a thoughtful and great 
reader. Food for his mind is to him a necessity of his intellectual 
existence. The tendency of the nation towards instruction appears 
to have been the result of a general civilization, which extends 
through all classes of society. The capital is in this point of view 
the centre of education and culture. The numerous political and 
literary journals which are published there appears to be scarcely 
sufficient, notwithstanding their high price, to the daily wants of 
the reading population 3 ! " 

H It would be difficult to give a just idea of the zeal with which 
the poor are animated in Scotland to give their children the advan- 
tages of a good elementary education. This is in the eyes of all a 
duty so essential that the most obscure and even vicious men 
would reproach themselves for neglecting it. If we except some 
remote corner of the highlands, it would be difficult to find in this 
country any one who does not know how to read and sign his 
name. In the middle class, classical education is rarely omitted, 
and the poor are often known to impose sacrifices upon themselves, 
and even the privation of necessaries, to secure the education of 
their sons. The parish schoolmasters of Scotland form a class of 
men who are respected, and deserve to be so \" 

" The extraordinary number of illustrious men which Scotland 
produced towards the end of the last century, " says M. Moreau de 
Jonnes, "gave the country the knowledge of itself. The Presby- 
terian clergy used their powerful influence to spread instruction 



i. Revue Britannique, 1849, July, pp. 90, 91. — 2. Solitaire, vol. II, p. 566. — 3. Idem 
vol. ii, p. 603. — 4. Saint-Germain Leduc, vol. n, p. 316. 



9(i 



amongst the people, and succeeded marvellously. Tn 1820, the 
day-schools established in Scotland gave instruction to 

110,770 free pupils. 
65,533 paying pupils. 

Total 176,303 pupils. 

" It is a tenth of the population, and since then no infant re- 
mains without instruction. This happy state of things has been 
maintained and perpetuated. 

" The family affections and the love of country have facilitated 
in Scotland the establishment of public schools. Children who 
cannot be supported by their parents are supported by their friends, 
their benefactors, or by patriotic associations ; and an entire genera- 
tion has passed away without any diminution being observable in 
the honourable sentiment which imposes this voluntary tribute. 
It appears that in the Scottish schools, they do not confine them- 
selves, as nearly everywhere else, to giving an automatic instruc- 
tion, but busy themselves in developing the real fruits of education. 
The superiority observable in the Scotchman, in divers circum- 
stances, is attributed to these educational influences. 

( ' As a sign of the worth of Scotchmen , the following anecdote is 
worth mentioning: In 1807, a body of English troops, a part of 
the expedition of General Fraser, fell into the hands of the Turks, 
who sold their prisoners, and they were dispersed in Upper Egypt. 
When they were re-purchased, it was remarked that the highest 
ransoms were demanded for the Scotchmen, on account, no doubt, 
of their intelligence, their good conduct, and their education. It 
was necessary to redeem them at the price of a hundred sequins, 
while they obtained the redemption of the others at the rate of 
from twenty to thirty sequins K" 

" Reading, and the instruction it produces, " says M. de Jonnes, 
"are promoted in the British islands by religious duties, and the 
interest of the country. There is not a family in which the Bible 
is not read; also, there is not one, however poor it may be, which 
does not procure newspapers, and occupy itself more or less with 
public affairs. These national habits furnish every body with the 
means and the occasions for reading daily. Thus it becomes for 
every one a duty, a pleasure, a necessity, a want V- 

u There is in Scotland more than one copy of a newspaper for 
every individual, and, in Ireland, one for four inhabitants. " 



1. Dc Jonnes, vol. U, p. 326. — 2. Idem, p. 339. 



!)7 

This account would be singularly modified in favour of Protes- 
tantism, if we remark that the immense majority of newspapers 
published in Ireland are published and read by the Protestant 
minority. 

Thus Scotland is not less distinguished by its intelligence than 
by its morals, when it is compared with Ireland. We can foresee 
then, already, that it will be the same thing in regard to its ma- 
terial prosperity. But here the distance is so great between these 
two neighbouring countries, that it will undoubtedly surpass all 
the anticipations of the reader. 

Let us commence our parallel by showing the physical condi- 
tion of the Irish Catholics. Baron d'Haussez, ancient Minister of 
Charles X., shall open the investigation by a deposition which ought 
not to be suspected by Catholics , and which is all the more impos- 
ing that it points out what has always appeared to us to be the 
real cause of the miseries of Ireland : 

" The effect upon the Irish, " says M. d'Haussez, {C of the bad 
direction which the priest gives to their minds, is a prostration of 
their moral force, which annihilates all their intellectual faculties, 
and blunts even the consciousness of misfortune and the desire to 
put an end to it. The Irish peasant is stimulated only by the 
sense of hunger; insensible to all others, he does not concern him- 
self either with the nakedness of his family or the dirtiness of his 
house, which he shares with the animals, who are few, and of 
little value, and whose produce place in his hand now and then a 
few pieces of money, which are quickly exchanged for whiskey, his 
favourite liquor 1 . 

" Ireland is peopled with poor, and comfort is an exceptional 
state, limited to a very small number of families, in comparison 
with those who live in complete destitution; the only relief which 
distress meets with, when carried further than in any other 
country, is that it has become common, the condition enforced upon 
the whole nation, and that at least those who suffer find no occa- 
sion for making comparisons, which would aggravate their lot 2 . 

" England every year sees thousands of Irish who come in flocks 
to crowd amongst the workmen already to onumerous by whom she 
is encumbered; they bring strong arms, which are often turned 
aside from useful employment by heads excited by the immo- 
derate use of gin; and they mix in all quarrels of the workshops. 
They are seen everywhere where there is work or disorder, 



i. D'Haussez, vol. U, pp. 206, 207. — 2. Idem, p. 211. 



7 



08 



equally disposed for the one or the other, noisy, intermeddling, 
and troublesome everywhere. These dispositions make it more 
difficult for them to find employment for their strength, and adds 
to the causes of their extreme misery K " 

" The Irish beggars might be called the lazzaroni of Great 
Britain. At every step, in the streets of London, you meet an 
Irishman who asks charity; by their manners and their pronuncia- 
tion, even a stranger cannot help knowing them " 

"At the time I visited George Yard, Wentworth-street, Saint 
Giles of London/' saysM. Pichot, "it was Irish colonies chieflywhich 
had there established their misery and filth. I read also in an old 
report of parliamentary inquiries, which reduced every thing to 
figures, that of 15,000 beggars in London at that time, there were 
5,000 Irish. At the same time, it was calculated that a fourth of 
the prostitutes of London came from the same nation 3 . * 

*' The commerce and industry of Ireland, like the other sources 
from which her prosperity ought to flow, are in an absolute state of 
depression. The extreme poverty of the country prevents an 
active consumption of commodities, which is everywhere the 
most certain base of the rapidity and importance of commercial 
transactions \ " 

"Ireland contains one of the most miserable populations of 
the earth ; and the one of all others, which, whilst trying to do it, 
adopts the means the least adapted to enable them to escape from 
their miseries; one of the most enslaved, and which justifies the 
most this enslavement by its tendency to free itself from an au- 
thority which has always shown itself to be moderate 5 . " 

In a report addressed by Patrick MTlye to the Lord Lieutenant 
of Ireland, we read the following details of the parish of West- 
Tullegobegly, county of Donegal : te The inhabitants are in the 
most needy condition; the most famished, the most destitute 
that I have ever known. Although I have gone over nine Irish 
counties, a part of Scotland and England, many colonies of North 
America, and walked on foot 2,253 miles, across seven of the 
Union States, nowhere have I seen the tenth part of such misery, 
want, and destitution . 

" I shall now draw up the tabular statement of it with all the 
exactitude of truth, but without the least exaggeration. This 
parish contains 4,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, who possess be- 
tween them only : one cart, one plough, sixteen harrows, eight 

1. D'Haussez, vol. n, p. 216. — 2. Saint-Germain, vol. iv, pp. 258 to 260. -» 3. Pichot, 
vol. i, p. 271. — 4. D'Haussez, vol. ir, p. 219. — 5. idem, p. 225. 



99 



men's saddles, two women's saddles, eleven bridles, twenty shovels, 
thirty-two rakes, se^ven table-forks, minety-three chairs, two 
hundred and forty-three stools, ten iron forks, twenty-seven geese, 
three turkeys, two mattresses, eight straw-mattresses, two stables 
for horses, six stables for cow r s, eight brass candlesticks, three 
watches, one national school, one priest, no cart with four wheels, 
no other carriage of any sort, no ha is, no clocks, no looking-glass 
above the value of threepence, no boots, no fruit-trees, no turnips, 
no carrots, no parsnips, no clover, nor any other horticultural pro- 
ducts, except potatoes and cabbages ; about ten feet square of glass 
for all the houses, except the chapel, the school, the presbytery, the 
house of M. Dombrain, and the guard-house of the constables. 

" No w T oman, married or unmarried, can be said to have more 
than one shift; the majority have none, and at least one-half of the 
men and women have no shoes on their feet; also there are not 
many families who have two beds, but in many the boys and girls of 
a mature age sleep pell-mell with their parents. Their beds are of 
straw, green or dry rushes and heath, with coarse sheets or none 
at all, and blankets in tatters *. " 

" If, " says Mi Nichols, in a report addressed to Lord John 
Russell, " you reason with the Irish peasants, and show them 
how easy it would be to ameliorate their lot, they fallback on their 
poverty. You see a man at his door warming himself lazily in the 
sun, or seated beside his peat-fire, whilst his cabin is surrounded 
with stinking mire across which it is impossible for you to pass. 
You tell him that with the water of the stream he could, in a few 
hours, clean all this filth. Oh ! he answers, we are so poor ! And 
yet he smokes his pipe, and probably does not deny himself a drop 
of whiskey 2 . " 

" As for the other necessities of life, the Irish have scarcely 
enough to clothe themselves by day and cover themselves by night. 
In the winter, notwithstanding the temperance of the climate, they 
die of cold as of hunger ; in many cabins there is but one coat for 
two individuals. They put it on by turns to go to mass on the 
Sunday ; the rest of the day they are covered in tatters 3 > In all 
countries there are more or less poor; but a nation of beggars is 
what only Ireland can offer. Ireland seems destined to show how 
far human misfortunes can go *. " 

6C The country people have rarely shoes or stockings ; they en- 
velope their bodies in an immense great coat; the men and women 

4. Revue Britannique, 1847, March, April, pp.98 to 100. — 2. Idem, p. 98. — 3. NoUgarerie, 
vol. Ill, p. 642. — 4. Idem, p. 645. 



100 



are bareheaded, and nearly al ways barefooted . As for the children, 
they are almost stark-naked. A rag of a shift or trowsers, or some- 
times an old shawl or ragged petticoat, with which they cover 
themselves the best way they can, is their ordinary costume. On 
the roads, at the entrance of every village, swarms of poor children, 
half naked, appear all of a sudden, and seem to come out of the 
earth. They besiege all the carriages, follow them with cries of 
distress, and do not stop until they have received charity 

" Potatoes cooked in a little milk from the cow which shares 
the house, and rendered a little insipid by a little salt, when they 
have enough of money to buy it, forms the nourishment of seven- 
eighths of the inhabitants of Ireland. The little which the woman 
gains from spinning flax, and the man from digging, goes to buy 
whiskey. As for clothes, they wear little or none', and shoes and 
stockings are things completely unknown. The more comfortable 
farmers, however, wear a little straw in their coarse shoes or 
brogues; but this is a rare luxury. A labourer rich enough, as 
they say, to put hay in his boots, is a Cresus in comparison with 
the ordinary Irishman. Some have a horse to themselves, whilst 
others unite with two or three neighbours to keep one. Under 
the same yoke they harness their horse and a stout labourer, who 
serves as a second horse, and who is not safer from the whip of the 
driver than his four-footed companion at the plough." 

" The peasants lounge about upon the road-sides, with the in- 
different air of travellers ; those men who have the palest com- 
plexions, and the most broken hats, sport the cast-off but repatched 
coats of gentlemen, taking care to make the patches more re- 
markable, persuading themselves that it is better to look like a 
broken down " gent. " than to appear to be a poor peasant. 
The urchins even wear cast-off clothes, and play amongst the house- 
hold pigs with what were in former times an old riding frock, 
a small coat, and a little hat. Nothing appears to be more rare 
in Ireland than old shoes. Paddy walks at his ease barefooted 
in spite of the formal cut of his rags 2 . " 

Mr. Edward Wakefield could say without contradiction in 1812 : 
" An estimable writer of this country acknowledged frankly that 
the Irish peasant is not much above the savage, either in regard 
to just notions of liberty, or in respect for the laws and civil 
institutions of men 8 . " In such a state of manners, the most bar- 
barous practices are not rare. At Gweedore, for instance, besides 

1. Pl-eVOst, p. 142. — 2. PiChol, vol. I, pp. 224 to 229. — 3* Idem, vol. II, p. 258. 



1 01 

the shearing to which the sheep are subjected once a year, every 
one has recourse to the wool whenever it is wanted. A woman 
who is knitting a pair of stockings for the next fair, if she need 
some more wool, catches a sheep or a lamb, and shears or tears 
off from the back as much as she chooses. The poor beast, thus 
shorn, presents a strange and ridiculous spectacle. 

" Under the influence of the wandering habits of these popu- 
lations, it may be readily understood that the home is ill cared for, 
as it is only in fixed habitations that men try to obtain domestic 
comforts. The huts of these Bedouins consist of four walls, built 
of stones, sometimes of nothing but turf put together, without 
mortar; no chimney, two doors, one in front, and the other 
behind, to take advantage of the wind; and an opening, by 
courtesy called a window, in which the glass has been replaced by 
sheepskin in the state of parchment. 

" In the inside may be seen two or three wooden stools, an iron 
pot, an old wooden bed full of heather or potatoes, without curtains 
and without blankets, a churn, two or three plates, a shovel, a 
spade, and a pipe. The cow, if there is one, has no other stable 
than the kitchen, or even the room itself, under the pretext that 
it is more convenient to have the animal at hand when her milk 
is wanted l . " 

"At Dungarvan," says M. Pichot, " our carriage was suddenly 
surrounded by about thirty real Irish mendicants. If I were to 
believe my imagination, I should say there were a hundred instead 
of thirty. I still have before my eyes that horrible spectacle, 
I hear those lamentables cries, I smell those stinking exhalations. 
Sometimes they seem to surround me like the head of the hydra, 
more terrible than any of the monsters of any mythology or of the 
Virgilian or Dantean pandemonium, such was the agglomeration of 
grimacing faces around us. Sometimes, on the contrary, all these 
livid heads, all these dislocated bodies, seemed to multiply them- 
selves by the effects of the eagerness with which they separated and 
crossed to go round the carriage and hold out their hands wherever 
they heard the clink of a bit of money." 

"At Dungarvan, as elsewhere, no trade or labour is so profitable 
for a family as the lucky accident of an infirmity, or a deformity 
which permits them to go and hold out their hands, and sing their 
complaints in the streets. Poor homes are envied for their lame, 
their cripple, their rickety child or blind old men, as these are 



1. Pichot, vol. ii, pp.463 to 465. 



the most useful members of the family. The new-born which was 
drowned in the Eurotas at Sparta, is at Dungarvari reared with 
particular care 1 ." 

" At Kilkenny, the carriage was completely surrounded by menr 
dicants, and nothing could be heard anywhere except the varied 
cries distinguishable by the difference of their voices, and their 
ages and sexes. Their clothes, that is to say the tatters of the 
women, which huug down to their ancles, allowed to be seen 
what is concealed everywhere else, although here they are not 
deemed shameful. 1 saw a mother picking up the skins of goose- 
berries, which one of my companions had spit out, and push them 
into the mouth of her infant. Since 1 left Fondi, in the kingdom 
of Naples, I have never seen anything like it V 

"If industry had made more progress, and a good use were made 
of the resources of the country, Ireland could nourish three times 
her present number of inhabitants. During the whole winter 
there is no work to be had ; and the peasants subsist upon the 
produce of the potatoe field which adjoins their cabins. When 
spring returns, the Irishman shuts up his cabin, and his wife and 
ragged children drag themselves along the roads, and beg at the 
doors of the farmers to support existence until the arrival of the 
potato harvest. Other peasants, who are without families, quit for 
ever the scene of their miseries, in order to find a living more or 
less certain in the English factories V 

" The poor of the suburbs cross in hundreds the most beautiful 
quarters of Dublin to receive in one of the principal houses of 
refuge, situated upon the quay in the centre of the town, their 
daily allowance of food, distributed in three meals : breakfast, 
dinner, and supper. These mobs of beggars are to be seen in the 
streets going and coming, producing the most powerful and painful 
impression which can possibly accompany the traveller in his 
way, and which does not leave him when he quits the capital of 
Ireland * * 

" In the cabins of the fishermen may be seen little half-naked 
fair-haired children upon the floors of holes hollowed out of 
the earth, and covered with turf and mud which are called cabins, 
living, playing, and wallowing amongst the little pigs which 
reside with them. The interior of these habitations presents 
everywhere the same aspect of extreme poverty, which at every 
step oppresses the heart, and renders an excursion into the interior 



1. Pichot, vol. i, pp. 224, 2-29. — 2. Raunier, pp. 309, 310. — 3. Solitaire, vol. u, p. 532. 
— 4. Idem. p. 547. 



403 



of the country ineffably painful. Every where misfortune provokes 
compassion, every where it seems to claim alms, which your 
heart cannot refuse at the sight of entire populations plunged in 
distress whom you meet at every step in a fertile land full of uncul- 
tivated estates. This distress of the Irish people reaches the ex- 
tremest limits of poverty. Their costume presents nothing to the 
view except rags similar to the rubbish of the shop of a chiffon- 
nier, or rag-merchant. The cottages of the peasants, without com- 
paring them to the subterraneous Shuts of which we have spoken, 
would scarcely be considered in England or Scotland fit for barns 
for cattle 1 ." 

But let us take courage, and descend into the lowest and last 
retreat of misery, into the Irish cottage which is found everywhere, 
and which becomes finally the true type of the habitations of the 
country. "An Irish cottage, " says M. Prevost, "is a sort of shed, 
about twelve feet long and ten broad. The walls are made of mud 
and flints, or of old and almost rotten planks ; the roof is composed 
of a layer of clods of heather, spread over the laths. To prevent 
the wind from sweeping away this frail covering, the peasant has 
thrown over it some large stones, which often help not a little to 
ruin the feeble edifice. Generally, no windows are to be seen; 
light enters only by means of the door, or the hole which has 
been made in the roof, a hole which as may be supposed serves as 
a chimney, and which is surmounted outside by the remains of an 
old wicker basket instead of a chimney-pot. At first sight, the 
traveller thinks it impossible to penetrate into these sombre re- 
treats, for the entrance is almost always obstructed by a dunghill, in 
which manure and filth swim about between gutters of foul and 
muddy water. This fetid receptacle is crossed by means of step- 
ping stones, and he must deem himself lucky who crosses without 
splashing. I asked a farmer one day why he did not throw T dung- 
heap behind his cabin, instead of leaving it at the entry. 'It is/ 
he replied, ( because we have no other place. ' You have scarcely 
succeeded in entering one of these houses when you are almost 
suffocated by a thick smoke, which descends into your throat, and 
prevents you for some minutes from distinguishing any thing 
else except a peat-fire opposite the door. When your eyes are 
somewhat accustomed to the obscurity, and you can see around 
you, you are seized with pity by a spectacle of misery surpassing 
everything you have imagined. In this same damp room live 



1. Solitaire, vol. 11, p. 552. 



104 



pell-mell two, three, and sometimes four generations of human 
beings. The sow seems a member of the family as she lies 
crouched in her corner, surrounded by the children. The hens 
are roosted in the holes under the thatch, or upon the top of some 
old trunk. In the closest and best-sheltered corner is seen an old 
shake-down, which is the bed of the grandfather. As for the other 
members of the family, they all lie down together upon straw, or 
some handfuls of heather. The catalogue of the furniture is soon 
made ; it consists first of all of an iron pot for boiling the potatoes, 
a wicker basket to hold them in, two stone seats or banks of earth 
set in the wall, a three-legged stool upon which they seat the guest 
they receive ; an old dresser to which are hooked some broken 
plates; add to these some garden tools scattered here and there, or 
set up in corners, a crucifix crowned with a glory of laurels which 
has been blessed by the priest, some strangely illuminated saints, 
and you will have a complete Irish home : yet the inhabitants of 
these huts so naked and shattered, less wholesome and comfort- 
able than the wigwam of the Indian, are not at all regarded as 
belonging to the most miserable class. There are thousands of 
human beings with still more to complain of, who have neither 
a bit of land to grub up, nor a den in which to shelter themselves, 
and who are reduced to wander as mendicants or to go into the 
workhouse, exchanging their liberty for two rations of potatoes 
per day }. " 

" The grandfather's chair, in the house into which I entered, 
consisted of three small planks of wood arranged as a triangle, and 
leaving a void in the middle ; the seat was supported by three 
girders, two of which served as legs, and the third rose up two 
or three feet, and answered the purpose of a back. The wooden 
goblet called melher, in which I was offered some whiskey, was 
square and not round, as all the glasses and cups are which 
are known and used in other parts of the world. I confess that 
the first time I raised it to my lips I spilt at least half the liquid 
which it contained ; it was necessary that I should study awhile 
prior to succeeding in adjusting my mouth conveniently to 
one of the large angular sides of that ancient oaken vase, which 
might have been in use at the feasts of the Druids. The 
means of transport employed by the peasants of Connaught are 
just as comfortable as the memorable melher of which I have 
given you a description. The first vehicle that I met on leaving 

1. Prevos% pp. 375, etc. 



m 

the cabin consisted simply of a plank of wood fixed between two 
massive wheels without spokes, like the card-board wheels which 
children cut for their little carts, w r hich they make to be drawn 
along by Hies and beetles. Two gigantic pigs drew with difficulty 
this heavy rolling machine, upon which sat at their ease three 
robust lads *. " 

" You are not surprised to see coming out of the Irish cottages 
men, women, and children, all equally ragged. The mud huts 
have generally no opening except the door, as if the misery they 
conceal were afraid of the light . An idea of their internal arrange- 
ment can be obtained from those left empty by emigration, and 
through a hole in the roof or a gap in the walls, by which the 
passer-by may gaze freely. Those which are still inhabited or 
habitable have adjoined to them a sty for the sow; but there are 
some in which this animal shares familiarly the common apartment, 
which is luckier than its master, for if the leavings of human food 
are insufficient for her, as generally happens, she has other re- 
sources, and can seek her fortune upon the sides of the road 2 . " 

(< Here there are no words which can describe what strikes the 
eye upon all sides; it is necessary to have seen those houses. 

What have 1 said, houses? no, those cabins Have I said cabins? 

no, those holes, mostly without windows or light of any kind, 
the same outlet serving for men and pigs; lying together in 
the same small space, the pigs fresh and well fed, and the men 
clothed in rags. The comfortable inhabitants of the town excepted, 
I have not seen a single Irishman, in a thousand, who had a 
coat, shirt, and trowsers without holes 3 . " 

Such are the doleful habitations of the Irish in the country. 
Let us glance at the towns, in favour of which the last writer has 
made his reservations; and, to see the best, let us survey the ca- 
pital. Undoubtedly the following picture does not include the 
whole of Dublin, but it is the picture of the part most essentially 
Catholic, and it is precisely what is most suitable.to our subject. 
" All the picturesque aspects, " says the same writer, " of the 
beautiful capital of Ireland are spoiled or I may say sullied by those 
swarms of mendicants who seem to issue out of the earth. As for 
me, thought I, when walking the other day with a respectable 
gentleman, who was obliging enough to act as my cicerone, it is im- 
possible to admire at my ease your edifices and your works of art, 
while I meet at each step my fellow-creatures who are dying of fa 



1. Prevost, pp. 381, 383. ~2. Pichot, vol. i, p. 224. — 3. Raumcr, vol. n, p. 315. 



106 



mine; now a ghostly woman with a dying infant hanging at her 
breast; and then a tottering and infirm old man showing in the 
sun his hideous sores and fleshless limbs. 

" It is difficult to form an idea of the horrible misery which 
reigns here. Day and night, upon the steps of the most beautiful 
hotels, or under the porticoes of the churches or public buildings, 
you knock your feet in passing against wretches who have scarcely 
strength to implore your charity in a doleful voice. Parliament 
votes a new poor law in \ain, and the local authorities in vain 
issue severe regulations for the prevention and suppression of men- 
dicity; the constables themselves, in spite of the orders they have 
received, cannot and dare not prevent wretches dying of famine 
from holding out their hands and begging from the passers-by. 
But it is especially in the ancient quarter, known under the name 
of the Liberties, that Irish paupei^ism may be seen in all its naked- 
ness. Courage is needed to enter alone and on foot into this dark 
labyrinth, this abyss of misery and corruption. In the evening, 
unfortunate women in rags, sometimes quite young girls, infants 
of twelve years old,'accost the' stranger and offer him their bodies 
at a low price, and if he refuses they try to move his pity, and 
merely ask alms. 

" Those mansions in which dwelt the rich and noble and most 
of the English race, but lately so brilliant and so splendid, are, now 
that the nobility have emigrated to the other side of the LifFey, 
black and dilapidated; the poor having thrown themselves into these 
abandoned palaces, and multiplied in them in frightful numbers. 
Some of these houses have no roofs, others neither doors nor 
windows; also, it is chiefly in the cellars that the wretched popula- 
tion of the Liberties searches for shelter from the cold and wet. 
Sometimes upon the steps of these retreats you may see squatted 
down two or three generations of these wretched creatures ; half 
naked children tumbling and playing carelessly about : these are 
least to be pitied; they do not understand as yet as the sadness of 
their lot; the father and mother are grave and gloomy; they know 
what they have suffered, and they despair of the future; with them 
is the grandmother, the head of the unhappy tribe; she is gene- 
rally quite brutified by a long life of sufferings and privations • 
with a steady look and a motionless body, she smokes tranquilly her 
old black pipe, and appears to have become equally insensible to 
pleasure and pain. The pencil and palette of a Murillo or a Ri- 
beira are necessary to sketch all these desolate heads, all these 
sinister faces, to paint all these rags so strangely torn, slashed, and 



107 



patched. When a puff of wind throws open up to the neck the 
cloak which hides the misery of most of the Irish, it is seen lhat 
the wearer has only on some fragments of shirts and pantaloons, 
and it is a thought to make one shiver to reflect that in a few weeks * 
winter will come and undoubtedly decimate that unfortunate caste. 
When famine makes itself cruelly felt and become intolerable, they 
are seen leaving their holes in bands and spreading over the town, 
the squares, and the public walks. They march together in silence, 
asking nothing, contenting themselves with showing to the rich 
their ragged vestments as their only reproach; a few sobs or a 
wailing cry is sometimes however torn by anxiety and want from 
the bosom of some poor mother carrying her infant upon her 
back, in the folds of her coarse cloak. This ragged procession, 
this ill-looking cortege, inspires at least terror into those who 
have not been touched by compassion. Every one hurries to give 
alms to these poor creatures, who then return to their brethren, 
who have been waiting for them impatiently in their doleful 
abodes 4 . " 

l e Dublin alone possesses more mendicants than Scotland alto- 
gether has had in twenty years. " 

Put this last word reminds us of the second part of our compa- 
rison; let us then cross the channel, and after having seen the mi- 
series of Catholic Ireland, witness the prosperity of Protestant 
Scotland. 

We read the following in the Revue des Deux-Mondes, of the 
year and month in which we write, January, 1854 : " Scotland is 
one of the greatest examples which exists in the world of the 
power of man over nature. I know nothing to rival to it except 
Holland; even Switzerland does not offer greater obstacles to hu- 
man industry. What adds to the marvellousness of this develop- 
ment of prosperity upon an ungrateful soil is that it is quite 
recent. A century ago, Scotland was still one of the poorest and 
most barbarous countries in Europe. It may now be asserted that 
there is not under the sun a happier or better-regulated country. 
Her total production has increased tenfold in the course of this 
century. Agricultural produce has alone increased in enormous 
proportions. Food is yearly produced there in an abundance 
which permits an immense annual exportation. The English 
themselves confess that Scottish agriculture is now superior to 
English agriculture, at least in several respects; it is into Scotland 



1. Pr6vost, pp. 5 to 8. 



408 

that the cultivators send their sons as apprentices upon the model 
farms ; the best books on agriculture which have appeared of late 
have been published in Scotland, and when English landlords 
wish for a good factor or bailiff, they go into Scotland in search 
of him. The average consumption there is two hundred pounds 
a-head as in England, while in France it is only one hundred and 
forty. How has Scotland reached this fair result in spite of a soil 
and climate naturally unfertile ? The Scotch make up for the in- 
feriority of their capital in comparison with the English by a 
greater spirit of economy, and more rude and assiduous personal 
toil. The farmers more generally work themselves, and, besides, 
their capital increases quickly. 

" Nowhere has the nature of leases been the subject of such a 
profound study. They may be said to have arrived in this re- 
spect at perfection. We must go into Scotland to find models when 
we undertake to introduce leases into a country in which they do 
not exist, and to transform poor and ignorant cultivators, des 
metayers ( persons who work for half the produce ), des bordiers, 
the servants at wages, into comfortable and intelligent farmers. 
Rents are on an average nearly as high in the best parts of Scotland 
as they are in England ; there are even places where they are 
higher, and the interior of the farms, formerly so poor, present a 
striking air of comfort. 

" Tn aid of the excellent system of leases has come the best orga- 
nization of credit in the world. Coolness, exactitude, sobriety, the 
genius of calculation, are in Scotland such profoundly national qua- 
lities, that a large system of credit has been established without in- 
convenience, and borne the most magnificent fruits. All the coun- 
trymen of Adam Smith are more or less impregnated with his 
sagacious and mater-of-fact spirit. The admirable mechanism of 
the banks affords incredible facilities in the transaction of business ; 
and agriculture is as perfect as industry. It may be said that 
there never is any want of any reasonable amount of money 
even for agricultural speculations. Every one makes it a point 
of honour not to abuse it, and thus it is maintained universally. 

" The means for the diffusion of the knowledge of good methods 
or improvements are at least as much employed in Scotland as in 
England. The Agricultural Society distributes yearly many prizes 
divided into different classes; agricultural methods , special cul- 
tures, woods and plantations, clearing waste lands, agricultural 
machines, cattle of all kinds, dairy produce, rural buildings. 
These competitions, at which the humblest farmer sits side by side 



1 09 



with the highest of the aristocracy, are at least as renowned as those 
of the same kind in England. The society possesses a museum in 
Edinburgh, where models are to be found of all the instruments 
used in Europe, specimens of all the grains cultivated, and correct 
pictures of all the prize cattle since the commencement of the com- 
petitions. 

"All these encouragements, however powerful they may be, do 
not suffice to explain the prodigious progress of Scotch agriculture ; 
the true causes are the same as in England; — 1 mean industrial 
wealth and free institutions. If the history of English industry is 
admirable, what is to be said of that of Scotland ! The vale of Clyde, 
formerly a desert, now rivals the rich county of Lancashire for its 
coal-pits , factories of all kinds, and its immense navigation. The 
germ of this wealth did not exist in \ 750 ; it is English capital 
which, aided by the frugal and laborious genius of Scotland, has 
transformed to such a degree in so few years that inert land. This 
industrial impulse has been followed, as it always is, by a corre- 
sponding agricultural progress." 

"When brought suddenly into contact with English manners and 
laws, the Scottish people shewed themselves to be one of the fittest 
to understand the benefits of individual independence and volun- 
tary order. She has from the very first surpassed England herself, 
for it may be said in a political point of view that Scotland is 
England improved. Nowhere in Europe there is less of govern- 
mental and administrative machinery, and we must go to America 
to find equal simplicity. The much-vaunted system of administra- 
tive centralization which fleeces three-fourths of France , to the 
profit of the remaining fourth, and which everywhere suffocates 
individual or local enterprize (et qui eiouffe parlout iiniiiative per- 
sonnelle ou locale) is there absolutely unknown; the places are few, 
and mostly unpaid. 

"The spirit of order and economy which every one carries into 
his private affairs, passes into the management of public affairs, and 
they effect these more with little money than is accomplished 
elsewhere with much. * What the taxes cannot do, the spirit of 
association and enterprize achieves quicker aud cheaper. The 
lessons of economical science have found in Scotland their most 
direct and complete application. 

"A Scotchman never thinks of any other support than himself. 
He does not pass his time in agitation and useless errands ; he has 
nothing to ask or beg. Giving himself entirely to his own affairs, 
he conducts them well, because nothing leads him away or astray. 



110 



There are none of those rivalries to which ambition gives rise; 
every one lives as he likes in his own home, and Avhen they can he 
of use to each other, as is often the case, arrangements are easily 
made for objects of common utility. Scotland is a family. 

"On descending the Lammermoor Hills, the undulating plains 
are seen, which surround Edinburgh for more than a million acres 
(500,000 hectares), which are called the Lothians. The cultivation 
is here really unrivalled. Rents of 100, or 200, or 300 francs, or 
four, eight, or twelve pounds the hectare (more than two acres) 
are quite common. The soil was formerly deemed incapable of 
growing rye, and they grew nothing but barley and oats. Not- 
withstanding their enormous rents, the Lothian farmers get on 
very well. They have all handsome houses, and whatever may be 
said of their national frugality, they live as well as many of our 
proprietors, even those who are best off. All the arable land in 
Scotland is now under cultivation , and even the waste lands are 
reclaimed intelligently and profitably. This country lives thus 
sheltered from the sufferings and anxieties which arise from over- 
population. It never can have anything to fear for its subsistence, 
since it voluntarily exports much of its agricultural produce; while 
the small number and the sobriety of its consumers permits it to 
change into capital a great part of its receipts. 

"In the Highlands, the most barren part of Scotland, which for- 
merly contained a race so troublesome to their neighbours, maraud- 
ing habits have given place to regular and laborious pursuits; 
there has not been, as M. Sismondi has said, an economy of labour 
and of happiness, but a notable increase of both. The profound 
security enjoyed in this country makes residence in these moun^ 
tains exceedingly attractive, notwithstanding the dulness of the 
climate. The overthrown huts of the clans have been succeeded 
by comfortable residences. Not only have the ancient chiefs built 
mansions upon the ruins of cottages, but rich Englishmen have 
purchased estates, and gone to live upon them. If the outside of the 
house is rough and solitary, the inside always presents all the 
appliances of luxury. Excellent roads and steam-boats upon the 
lakes make accessible with ease even the most solitary corners *. " 

Does the agricultural prosperity of Scotland date from Catholic 
times? The Dictionnaire de la Conversation answers : 

" Until the commencement of the fifteenth century, Scotland 
had made little progress in civilization. War was the only busi- 

1, Bcxuc Uriianniquo, 1854, 1st of January. — Lavergne, pp. 149 to 182. 



I 



ill 



ness of the chieftains, and they found their only pastime in the 
chase and drunkenness . The direct consequences of despotism, se r- 
vility, laziness, and misery shewed themselves in Scotland in their 
most, hideous forms. The people followed the example set them 
hy their leaders ; they lived upon the charity of the great, and were 
ignorant of every kind of industry • nearly every article of con- 
sumption came from Flanders. At that time agriculture produced 
nothing in Scotland beyond what was strictly necessary. Bread 
was looked upon as a delicacy. Civil wars disturbed continually 
the reign of the laws. 

Such was the Scotland of the fifteenth century. What was it 
that changed it even according to the testimony of our author ? 
Read : " Protestant beliefs were early spread in Scotland, and, 
from the fifteenth century, there were amongst the mountains of 
the Highlands a great number of secret partisans of the doctrine of 
Wycliif, who read in the bosom of their solitudes the English transla- 
tion of the Bible. The ignorance of the churchmen and laymen of 
Scotland opposed for a long time the propagation of the new faith. 
While the churches struggled agamst the propagation of protestant- 
ism by the most violent means, the new religion acquired powerful 
partisans amongst the nobility. The bishops had long been the 
object of the envy and jealousy of the nobles, while the churchmen 
of inferior rank were generally despised for their ignorance, and 
hated for the oppressions they practised against the lower classes of 
the people. The inclination of the Scotch to meditation greatly 
facilitated the propagation of the new doctrines. The decree of 
the Parliament of 1543, which permitted the people to read the 
Bible in their own tongue, was one of the most active means of this 
propagation." 

If the admirable agriculture of Scotland does not date from Catho- 
lic times, may we not suppose that at that epoch at least the seeds of it 
had been sown? No, on the contrary the Reformation had to work 
a long time in the country, prior to bringing out the love of labour, 
and the intelligence of which we now see the results. 

Saint-Germain Leduc says in effect : " For a long time Scotland 
had nothing but wretched oaten and barley cakes, which was found 
upon every table. The farms, the villages, and even the small 
towns, were ignorant of wheaten bread. 

In the year 1727 a field of wheat, in the neighbourhood of Edin- 
burgh, was regarded as a prodigious attempt, and many honest 
Scotchmen came down from their mountains to see it with their 
own eyes. Scotland now produces ten times more wheat than 



112 



in 1780, and it is now the bread in the towns, the villages, and 
even most of the farms *. " 

When the prosperity of a people springs from their virtues and 
from accidental circumstances, we may be sure that it will show 
itself under different forms : thus Scotland is flourishing not only 
in agriculture, but also in industry and commerce ; nearly all the 
workshops and factories have been brought in this country into as 
high a degree of perfection as in England. Since 1750, they 
have especially worked in flax and hemp. Nevertheless, the fabri- 
cation of fine linen has diminished considerably, in consequence of 
the competition of the Northern or Protestant parts of Ireland. 

" Scotland possesses also an immense number of factories of soap, 
candles, starch, immense tanneries, important distilleries, etc. 
Fishing occupies many hands. Scotland has an infinite number of 
saw-mills. Most of the machines now used in manufactures are of 
Scottish origin. Their construction, that particularly of steam- 
engines, forms an important branch of trade. In the Scottish ports 
may be seen a multitude of carpenters' yards for building and 
repairing many ships of all sizes. " 

" Scotland did not in former times take more than a small share 
in foreign commerce. Her commerce with the North and West of 
Europe dates from the time of Cromwell. In the middle of the 
following century, immense cargoes of goods were sent to Holland, 
Sweden, and the ports of the Baltic. Scottish trade sent its pro- 
ducts chiefly to Archangel, Spain, Portugal, the Mediterranean, and 
Canada. The Clyde is the rendez-vous of most of the ships sent 
to North and South America. A very active commerce also 
takes place with London. The merchant marine of Scotland has 
2,500 ships 2 . " 

Let us complete the parallel by adding a picture of a Scottish town, 
as we have given one of an Irish town. We have seen Catholic 
Dublin ; let us see Protestant Edinburgh : 

"The city of Edinburgh is remarkable for its University, the acti- 
vity of its printing presses, and the importance of its publishing 
trade, which has earned it the name of the Modern Athens, for its 
libraries, for its collection of natural history, for its numerous in- 
stitutions for the spread of instruction and virtue amongst the 
working classes, for its industry, and for its commerce 3 ." 

" Everything grateful in hospitality, and everything varied in 
learning, presents itself in turns to the foreigner who is admitted 



. 1. Saillt-Germaill LedllC, VOl. HI, p. 162. — 2* Dictiormaire de la Conversation, at the word 
Ecosse. — 3. Balbi, p. 515. 



113 



into the talons of Edinburgh. Nowhere will he find more kind- 
ness, more obligingness, or more desire to please. The Scotch 
have well-founded pretensions in science and in arts, and every 
one tries to master some branch or other. There results from this 
more general information than is found elsewhere 

" The University has long been celebrated for the talents of its 
professors, and especially for its School of Medicine. The number 
of professors is 27, that of students more than 2,000. They have the 
use of a library of more than 50,000 volumes, a beautiful museum 
of natural history, a botanical garden with hothouses; a basin 
for aquatic plants, and a hall for the lectures. The High School is 
frequented by more than 800 scholars. There are, besides, four 
English schools, under the protection of a Town Council, a draw- 
ing academy, a royal riding school, and several other establish- 
ments. The city possesses besides 25 scientific and literary so- 
cieties, amongst which may be mentioned the Royal Society, esta- 
blished in 1782, the Wernerian Society, the Royal Society of Anti- 
quaries, the Astronomical Institution, which possesses an observa- 
tory supplied with all the necessary instruments; they have there, 
moreover, several other useful associations, such as that of the Advo- 
cates', the Physicians' and Surgeons', and the Highland Society, 
formed by the nobility and gentry, and intended to grant rewards 
for reclamation of w aste lands, for the advancement of agriculture, 
and the improvement of cattle and sheep. Commerce supports 
there twelve private banks, possessed of the privilege of circulating 
a certain number of bank-notes. Philanthropic views are domi- 
nant over the management of the prisons, of 11 hospitals, of 
60 houses of charity, and a crowd of other benevolent institutions. 
Finally, the Scottish capital possesses seven public libraries, and 
publishes eleven literary, learned, or political journals. It has 
been remarked that this combination of learned men has dif- 
fused through the different classes of society the gentle frankness, 
the polished manners, and the toleration of opinions which distin- 
guishes ordinarily the great capitals V 

" The new town of Edinburgh shines chiefly by its regularity, 
cleanliness, aristocratic decorations, and all the social and domes- 
tic advantages. The large streets, squares, gardens, belong to all 
the styles, Greek or Gothic; colonnades, ogives, statues, compose 
the exterior of the city. The social advantages which make Edin- 
burgh, without a single exception in Great Britain, a place at least 

1. D'Haasscz, vol. u, p. 149. — 2. Malte-Brcrn, book thc60ib, pp. 164 and 163. 

8 



m 

in the tirst rank, draw to it justly persons who love the fine arts, 
sciences, and letters, and who take pleasure in moral and instruc- 
tive conversations. How is possible not to love Scotland with such 
advantages and attractions ? 

" 1 avow that I have never experienced a more agreeable or 
durable impression than that derived from my sojourn in that royal 
metropolis of the East of Scotland. To what kind of superiority 
can a modern town aspire, if it is not to that of shining at once by 
graceful and imposing buildings, by the ineffable charm of a society 
of men and women who add almost always to the piquant traits of 
wit solidity of judgment, and austere and religious chastity of 
morals! Edinburgh is a beacon light, to which intelligent men 
ought to turn who fear the rocks. Edinburgh is like a star of civi- 
lization which shines upon the Old and the New World, and it 
would be wise to take it as our guide in the obscurity in which we 
walk often without circumspection 1 . " 

But does not Edinburgh, as the capital, much surpass what is to 
be seen in the provinces? To know it, let us follow our traveller : 
" I do not know a coach-service comparable to that which took us 
to Aberdeen, in dignity, cleanliness, and rapidity. Coachman, 
guard, coach, and horses, are irreproachably got up, and it is rather 
the carriage of a king in red livery which carries you along than 
that of a public service. An active and intelligent population of 
merchants, agriculturists, and workmen has succeeded in raising 
out of ruins a town like Aberdeen . Look at the great markets, the 
post-office, the great cemetery with its Ionian colonnade, Marshal 
College, its statues, its churches, its hospitals, its multiplied bene- 
volent institutions, its well - regulated factories, and you will be 
convinced that labour and religious generosity alone found such 
rich and useful creations. 

£ ' No doubt women are not entirely sheltered from the inconve- 
niences of industrial labour in the factories of the town ; but on 
the other hand how many evils may be prevented by assiduous 
occupation with one task ? What a grand spectacle is this feminine 
world assembled upon a few square yards, and successively trans- 
forming the raw material into thread of all dimensions, from the 
thickest to the imperceptible, for the use of all the nations of the 
globe ! It is not astonishing that Scotland should be the country of 
Adam Smith and James Watt ! 

<c The library, and there is no want of books in the public esta- 



1. Trabaud, pp. 292, mh 



1 l.'i 

blishments of Great Britain, was naturally supplied with works on 
christian morals, and industrial and commercial economy; and 
when I reflected that the cotton manufacture was in its infancy 
only a century ago, the spectacle at Banner-Mill appeared to me 
still more grand *. 

u Industrial activity has been added to the commercial opulence 
of Glasgow, and from this sum of wealth, achieved by intelligence, 
labour, and some natural advantages, has sprung this little world of 
three hundred thousand souls, living in the midst of one of the 
most magnificent cities of the globe. This population has increased 
in a manner almost fabulous ; in 1651, the most ancient census 
known, it was only 14,000 souls; in 1789, it was 50,000 ; in 1830, 
200,000 ; and in 1840, 250,000 souls. If by first town or capital 
we meant what has always been the official capital, a monumental 
city inhabited by a peaceful society of intelligent and literary men 
the palm of precedence must be assigned to Edinburgh; Glasgow, 
on the contrary, will obtain the precedence, if to an illustrious past 
they add a prodigious quantity of modern documents, majestic 
quarters sometimes superior to those of Paris and London, and a 
commercial movement never before heard of, sustained by a nu- 
merous population 2 ." 

We have compared Ireland and Scotland, and we have seen where 
the superiority is found. We shall not insist upon it to make it 
more felt, but before finishing we shall reply to an objection which 
Ave have ourselves raised : does not this difference arise from other 
causes than differences of religious belief ? From the difference of 
geographical position, legislation , etc. ? Our reply shall be very 
simple; leave Scotland aside, and compare Ireland with Ireland, 
that is to say the Catholic South with the Protestant North. If the 
same conclusion is returned, it will be all the stronger, because 
the South of Ireland enjoys a soil, a climate, and natural ports much 
superior to those of the North. Here, as elsewhere, we shall above 
all allow Roman Catholic authors to speak : 

(( The Irish of the North/' says M. Prevost, " have from times im- 
memorial devoted themselves to the linen manufacture, yet they 
were still much behind and much below the people of the continent. 
When the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove from France so 
many industrious Protestants, the English government shewed 
much zeal in attracting these exiles into Ireland. The Parliament 
voted a sum which was set apart to their establishment, and in 



1. Trabaitd, pp, 322 to 327. — 2. idenx, p. 332. 



115 

exchange confided to them the mission of instructing and training 
the native workmen. The first great linen and camhric factories 
of Belfast were founded by French immigrants, and in looking over 
the Commercial Almanack of that city, you may still discover French 
names. The population increased ; Belfast felt suffocated in its 
girdle of walls ; the fortifications were destroyed, the ditches were 
filled up, and the ruins of the citadel served to erect new factories... 

" Few towns possess so many establishments destined to succour 
the unfortunate as Belfast; houses of refuge are to be seen there for 
almost all sorts of misfortune. There are special hospitals for the 
blind, the deaf and dumb, the fever-patients, lunatics, the feeble ; 
with asylums for penitent girls, liberated convicts, domestics out of 
place, and women out of work. There are at Belfast thirteen Pres- 
byterian chapels, three chapels set apart to the Anglican worship, 
and two Catholic churches. It may thus be seen that the puritan 
sect is alone more powerful than the two others. Belfast is not only 
the capital of commerce in Ireland; it is also the metropolis of 
puritanism. 1 " • 

Belfast is a remarkable example of the prosperity of the Irish and 
Protestant towns of the North : " In 1786, Belfast was an unimpor- 
tant place, with a wretched harbour ; and the revenue of its port 
was but 1,500/. In 1838, it contained 50 factory steam-engines; 
in 1841, its mills for spinning linen-yarn alone amounted to 25, one 
of the principal employing 800 hands ; in 1846, the Tidal Harbour 
commissioners pronounced it 'the first town in Ireland for enter- 
prise and commercial prosperity/ and in 1850, its port revenues 
had increased to 29,000/. V 

" Londonderry, in the North, appears to be in a very flourishing 
state ; a great activity reigns there, and the inhabitants are almost 
all Presbyterians and merchants. The houses are well built, the 
quays large and convenient. The sojourn which I had previously 
made at Belfast rendered it unnecessary for me to stop at London- 
derry, where I should not have anything to observe but the laborious 
habits, the regular and uniform morals, of a population which is 
not really Irish, but Anglo-Scottish in its origin and character. 

" The city issurrounded with ravishing scenery. During the first 
half of the day I traversed fertile fields and well-kept and beautiful 
domains. I was still in one of the favoured districts of the North of 
Iceland, which owe their prosperity to rich and industrious English 
and Scottish colonists 3 /' 



1. Provost, pp. 335, 337. — 2. Dill, p. 29. — 3. PrCYCSt, p. 362. 



M7 

"The village Morevian, established at Grace-Hill, always in the 
Protestant North, at about two miles from Ballymeno, contains 
about four hundred persons of the two sexes; it consists of four streets 
and is built with much taste; the church, which is a pretty edifice, 
is placed in the centre. Every house has a garden behind it. The 
profusion of flowers which they place before their houses, as well as 
those of their gardens and the palissades which surround all, pro- 
duce an extremely agreeable effect, and give the whole an air of 
happiness. The establishment seemed perfectly regulated. The 
most minutious order seemed to have presided over the details V 

Has this contrast between the North and the South struck none 
but the eyes of Protestants ? No, hear the voice of a Catholic who 
is about to point it out: "I left the industrious colonies of the 
North/' says M. Prevost, "and suddenly the scene changed, and I 
found again the deserts, heather, bogs, tottering hovels, in which 
are huddled together successions of famished generations. Still 
sadder pictures revealed to me that I had penetrated into the 
heart of Donegal, one of the poorest and most backward counties of 
Ireland. As I advanced, the scenery became more sombre and sa- 
vage.. . The city of Donegal, the county-town, islarge and populous ; 
it is quite an Irish town, with crooked streets and ruinous houses 
scattered here and there in disorder. The whole population seemed 
to live upon the public road. The squares are continually encum- 
bered with men, women, and children, almost naked. The spec- 
tacle affected me painfully ; I recollected that at Belfast, and on 
the previous evening at Londonderry, I had seen a whole people 
busy at work. Capital is deficient at Donegal, as in many other 
Irish towns, which are equally gorged with able and robust inha- 
bitants doomed to vegetate rather than live, and spend their days 
without being able to find work 2 ." 

" Kilkenny was an important town when Belfast was only a 
village; it has had several factories, eleven water-mills, and such a 
carpet factory that its English rival, to avoid the competition, de- 
manded the repeal of the Union ! In j 834, Mr. Inglis saw only one 
man in the principal factory which formerly employed two 
hundred workmen. He says, of the eleven water mills only oue 
goes, and that not to move machinery, but only to prevent them 
rotting 3 ." 

The prosperity of the North of Ireland has something in it which 
rejoices the heart of a Frenchman when he knows the origin of it, 

1. Saint-Germain Leduc, p. 209. — 2. Prevost, pp. 362 to 363. — 3. Dill, p. 30. 



m 

and we sympathize with the writer who expressed himself as follows 
only a few days ago in the Siecle : — 

" Allow me to say in passing, for the honour of the French name, 
that in Ireland, not less than in Germany, in the two Hessies, in 
Prussia, at Berlin, the French refugees expelled from their country 
hy the intolerance of the grand roi, have always and everywhere 
distinguished themselves by their rare intelligence, by their inven- 
tive spirit, and their ability and activity in industry. In i 693, three 
French congregations were founded in Dublin. A regiment of 
French Protestants fought under William III. at the battle of the 
Boyne, and became resident in Ireland after the peace. Even to 
this day traces of these French refugees are found at Waterford, at 
Lisburn, and especially at Portarlington, where they founded good 
schools. They conducted themselves well in these different locali- 
ties, and made themselves remarkable by the fabrication of silk, by 
the culture of flowers, and even by their success in literature and 
arts : and they conciliated general esteem by the purity of their 
morals V 

But we shall not confine ourselves to the impression of travel- 
lers; let us consult an Irishman upon Ireland, and as he is a Pro- 
testant, let us not accept any of his documents except those which, 
by being taken from statistics, cannot be suspected of partiality : 

" By the census of 1841, the proportions of the population in each 
province who could neither read nor write were : Protestant Ulster, 
33 per cent.; Roman Connaught, 64. Thus, it appears that, of 
persons totally ignorant, there were then in Ulster one-half less than 
in Connaught. Not less difference is found in the general intelli- 
gence of those who can read and write ; and much more in their* re- 
ligious knowledge; the northern child evincing an acquaintance 
with revealed truth not often found in the southern grandfather. 
Indeed, the great educational superiority of Ulster is clearly proved • 
by the fact, that, while Connaught almost exclusively depends 
on national schools for education, Ulster has many others be- 
sides, yet, with twice the population, the latter province contains 
thrice as many national schools as the former. And, though a large 
number of the youth of Ulster are educated at the Scotch universi- 
ties, yet, during the session of 1849, the students attending the Bel- 
fast Queeirs College amounted to 192 ; while in that of Cork, there 
were 115; in that of Galway, 68 ; and of this latter number, some 
of the most eminent were nati ves of Ulster. While, as to industrial 



%. Le Siecle, 4 th August, 1853. 



H9 



knowledge, we shall only add, that the south has been sending in- 
dividuals to the north to learn the cultivation and manufacture of 
flax ; and the National Board is obliged to employ northern females 
to teach their southern schools the sewed muslin manufacture. 

"The difference in moral character is still more remarkable. 
Of the 25 ; 000 troops usually stationed in Ireland, scarce 3,000 are 
found in U lster, and, except in its southern counties, even these are 
wholly unnecessary. Not a soldier is stationed betwen Belfast and 
Derry, a distance of 70 miles, embracing two most populous counties 
and various large towns. Of our 13,000 police, the number stationed 
in Ulster, in 1851, was 1,901, little more than a seventh of the force 
for a third of the population . And our prison statistics prove that 
even these are comparatively unnecessary. Of our 33,326 com- 
mittals in 1850, the number in Ulster was 5,260, not one-sixth 
part. Yet, considering how many crimes escape detection in the 
south from the prevailing conspiracy against the laws, and how 
few, in the north, from the opposite cause, even this is too large a 
figure to represent the proportion of actual crime. 

"The character of crime shows a still more remarkable difference. 
At almost every northern assizes, the first sentence of the judge's 
opening address to the grand jury is one of congratulation on the 
peace of their county, and the lightness of their calendar. Com- 
paratively few are transported from Ulster; and capital crimes occur 
there so rarely, that of 23 executions which took place in Ireland, 
in the year 1849 and 1850, only two occurred in Ulster. 

" In short, the vast moral superiority of that province is seen on 
every hand. In many districts, the doors of the dwellings are 
seldom locked ; in numbers of shops a child can safely deal ; while 
the atrocities which are the rule elsewhere are the exception in 
Ulster. There landlords are scarce ever shot, murderers shelter- 
ed, or wretches known to swear away innocent life; while in most 
counties assizes last a day or two, jails are half empty, and gibbets 
scarce ever required. During the assassinations of 1848, one threat- 
ening letter was sent to the county Derry to a landlord of high 
respectability; and it came from Connaught ! The excitement it 
created was intense (abundant proof of the novelty of the occur- 
rence); and the people formed themselves into a guard, and kept 
sentry for weeks round the gentleman's demesne; yet some journals 
would persuade us that, for the last few years, Ulster has become a 
scene of agrarian disturbance ! 

" Now, of course, it is impossible fully to estimate the influence 
exerted on Ulster's prosperity by its superior light and virtue, in 



120 

the security of property, the influx of capital, the encouragement of 
enterprise, and, above all, that general elevation and success which 
are the sure fruits of education and morality. But some idea of its 
magnitude may be formed from the fact that with one-third of the 
population, Ulster's share of the police, jail, and poor-law expenses 
of Ireland, is, in round numbers, but one-eighth K" 

" From the census of 1834, in Ulster the Protestants then were to 
the Roman Catholics in round numbers as H to 19 ; inLeinster as 2 
to 11 ; in Munster as 1 to 20; and in Connaught as 1 to 23. But 
any one who consults the same authorities from which we have 
taken those of the other three provinces will find that in all four, 
as with Protestantism, so are the knowledge, virtue, and prosperity. 
To give one mere sample, in the year ending 1848, there were, in 
round numbers, 3 persons receiving relief out of every 100 in 
Ulster; 7 in Leinster; 14 in Munster; and 19 in Connaught ! Here 
is a graduated scale singularly correspondent to the Protestantism of 
each province, and, excepting Connaught, the very reverse of what 
we were entitled to expect. For, besides other advantages, Leinster 
has long been the seat of government, and enjoyed the benefits of 
the " English pale ; " not only is Munster the garden of Ireland, 
but its population are the oldest inhabitants of the island ; while 
Ulster is a mere colony little more than 200 years old, and composed 
for the most part of a few Scotch adventurers, who were doomed to 
struggle for years against a host of difficulties. 

" If from the provinces we descend to the counties, we find the 
same proportions prevailing with singular exactness. To make 
this perfectly clear, we shall contrast a few of the most Protestant 
with a few of the most Roman Catholic counties. In Antrim, the 
Protestants are to the Roman Catholics nearly as 3 to 1 ; in Down, 
more than 2 to 1 ; in Derry, about 1 to 1; and in Donegal, I to 3, 
while in Cork they arel to 16; Limerick, 1 to 22; Kerry and 
Waterford, 1 to 23 ; Mayo and Galway, 1 to 24. Now, mark how 
the light of each county is as to its Protestantism, with only an excep- 
tion which establishes the rule; Donegal being mountainous, with- 
out a single large town; while Cork and Limerick are full of 
populous towns, with all their educational facilities. In 184-1, 
the proportions who could neither read nor write, were : Antrim, 
23 per cent. ; Down, 27 ; Derry, 29 ; Limerick, 55 ; Donegal, 62 ; 
Cork, 68 ; Kerry, 72 ; Waterford, 73 ; Galway, 78 ; and Mayo, 80. 
Thus, in the most Roman Catholic counties, we have four-fifths of 



1 Dill, pp. 80 to 82. 



121 



the people in total ignorance ; in the most Protestant only one- 
fifth ; and in all, with the above exception, the ignorance increasing 
as the Protestantism diminishes ! We might further prove, that in 
all these counties those who can neither read nor write are 
almost all Roman Catholics. Instance Donegal, the only county 
out of its place in the above scale ; and, according to a report of 
the Rev. E. M. Clarke, chaplain and local inspector, of 138 Protes- 
tants confined in Lifford jail in 1849, 91, or near three-fourths, 
could read; while of 92-2 Roman Catholic prisoners, only 213, 
or not one-fourth, could read. Indeed, all those districts which are 
remarkable for their religious and general ignorance, such as the 
West-coast region above noticed, are those in which the Church of 
Rome has for ages held unbroken sway. 

"Nor is the contrast less remarkable in the crime than in the 
ignorance of these counties. In the four Protestant counties of 
Antrim, Down, Derry, and Donegal, the gross number of committals 
in 1848 was not in proportion to the population one-four th that of 
the four Roman Catholic counties of Kerry, Lime rick, Galway, and 
Mayo ; yet, of the latter, none but Limerick belong to the disturbed 
districts/ Again, while from the prevailing conspiracy against justice 
in the latter, their convictions are not much over a third of their 
committals, in the former they are nearly four-fifths. And there is 
really no comparison as to the character of offences ; for example, 
of 69 criminals hanged in Ireland in the years ending 1850, 
43 were executed in Limerick alone, only 4 were hanged in Ulster, 
and only 1 in any of the above Protestant counties viz., in Donegal, 
the least Protestant. Finally, as a mere sample of their temporal 
condition f we find that, in the 4 Roman Catholic unions of Kanturk, 
Listowel, Castlebar, and Ballinrobe, there were, in 1848, twelve 
times as many paupers relieved, in proportion to their population, 
as in the 4 Protestant unions of Larne, Kilkeel, Coleraine, and 
Newton Limavady. And the awful state of these unions may be 
conceived from the fact, that half the population of Listowel, and 
one-third that of Castlebar and Ballinrobe, were at that period ob- 
liged to support the remainder ! 

*' Lest any remnant of doubt should hang on the reader's mind 
as to the extent of the coincidence we are tracing ; lest he should 
cherish the least suspicion that Ulster owes its superiority to some 
other cause which we are unable to discover, or unwilling to dis- 
close, let us turn for a moment to its own counties. While in 
Antrim, its most Protestant county, the percentage who cannot read 
or write is 23, in Cavan, its most Roman Catholic, it is 51. With 



122 

a population a little over that of Derry, that county has annually 
twice as many committals , and not one-third the proportional 
number of convictions. The number of police stationed in Derry 
in 1850 was 106, at the expense of 5,299/.; while in Cavan 
there were 396, at the cost of 16,985/., — over thrice the expense, 
and near four times the force. In short, Cavan is notoriously the 
most turbulent county in Ulster, and constantly occupied by a large 
body of military; while the only troops in the entire county of 
Derry are a depot stationed in Londonderry city, whose services are 
scarcely ever required. From counties we might even descend to 
parishes. One of the richest in Antrim is the parish of Killagan, 
and one of the poorest, that of Cushenden; yet in the former the 
Protestants are to the Roman Catholics as 6 to 1, and in the latter 
as 1 to 9. Do you say the northern Roman Catholic was driven 
back to the mountains by the Ulster settlers ? Then we ask, what 
has so generallydriven the southern Roman Catholics to the moun- 
tains, too ? By what other foes has he been pursued thither than 
those evils habits which compel men to retire before the advance 
of light and virtue ? But not to dwell on this : go to some of 
our finest plains, where no stranger has disturbed the southern. 
In the diocese of Cashel, Roman Catholics are to Protestants 
in the enormous disproportion of 28 to 1 ; and that naturally 
luxuriant region has long been known as the place where the 
demon of murder holds his court, and those assassination clubs 
have existed where each deed of blood is deliberately planned. 
Do you impute these crimes to landlord oppression ? We ask 
not why such oppression, often as intolerable in Ulster, occasions 
there so few dreadful crimes, and why these few are almost 
exclusively committed by Roman Catholics ; but we take you at 
once to the towns, where no landlord can rack, but men rise or 
sink by their own conduct. Instance Belfast and Cork, in the 
former of which Roman Catholics are to Protestants as 1 to 2 1/2, 
and in the latter as 5 to 1 ; and in the 10 years ending 1851, the 
population of Belfast had increased 24,4-00, or near 33 per cent, 
and its trade and manufactures proportionally ; while the popu- 
lation of Cork had in the same period increased 5,700, or not 
5 per cent; and even this consists for the most part of paupers, 
whom during the last five years want has driven from the surround- 
ing country ! Nay, pass if you please through the streets of each 
town, and you will find that in both, and with the very same op- 
portunities, the Protestants are the highest and the Roman Catho- 
lics the lowest of the people, 



12:* 

u We really must not weary the reader; but, as the last resistless 
proof of the fact we are establishing, examine the individuals of 
each persuasion , and you will find the Roman Catholics as a class 
everywhere the lowest in knowledge, virtue, and wealth, the un- 
educated, the criminals, the servants of their own land. It is 
notorious that during the late famine, even in Ireland's most Protes- 
tant parts, the immense proportion of the relieving were Protes- 
tants, and of the relieved, Roman Catholics. And our poor-house, 
jail, and hospital statistics usually show from twice to four times 
as many Romanist as Protestant inmates, in proportion to the de- 
nominations of each district. On the 8 th of May, 1850, there were 
in Derry M Protestant and 118 Roman Catholic prisoners, being 
three times as many of the latter, in proportion to the population 
of the county; and on the 14th of May, in the same year, there 
were in Tralee jail 572 Roman Catholic and only 4 Protestant pri- 
soners. In short, turn where you will, and the result is the same ; 
you can generally tell the prevailing denomination from the ap- 
pearance of every parish, every village, and almost every house in 
the land 1 . 

(e If you next turn to the period of the famine, those scenes of 
horror which were so common in the south were scarcely known 
in the north of Ireland ; and many of those who did perish there 
were natives of Connaught and Leinster, who poured into Ulster 
in quest of food. Of 10,000,000 /. of relief sent to Ireland at 
that period by public and private charity, scarce 1,000,000/. is 
supposed to have reached Ulster; while that province actually 
contributed large sums for the relief of the south and w T est, and has 
ever since paid the rate-in-aid tax for the same end. Finally, if 
you look to its condition since 1847, you find that those calamities 
which have prostrated Munster and Connaught have fallen upon it 
with but mitigated severity. While Ireland has lost one-fifth of 
its inhabitants, Munster almost one-fourth, and Connaught nearly 
one-third, Ulster has not lost one-sixth. Its pauperism is not half 
so great as that of the other provinces, its proportion of the entire 
poor-rates of the country being also about an eighth. In a word, you 
find that Ulster, though exposed to every ordinary influence felt by 
Munster and Connaught, has scarce known the miseries which have 
given them such fearful notoriety. So soon as you enter that 
province, the entire aspect of the country changes. All around 
assume that air of social health which is so easily perceived, yet so 



1, Dill, pp. 86 to 92. 



124 

difficult fully to describe. You have left behind the region of filthy- 
cabins and swarming beggars, ruined villages and deserted farms, 
and you enter a territory of comparatively rich cultivation, studded 
with comfortable dwellings and thrifty towns. And you cannot 
but feel that, from whatever cause, Ulster is at least fifty years ahead 
of its sister provinces in all the true elements of national progress ; 
and in its general aspect so much more resembles Britain than 
Ireland, that one could almost fancy some physical convulsion to 
have severed it from the one island and attached it to the other. 1 " 

The objection could be made to this comparison between the 
North and the South, that the Protestants have been transplanted, 
are not of the same race as the Catholics of the South, and that 
therefore the signal distance between their degree of civilization is 
not to be explained solely by the opposition of their faith. 

So be it; let as search elsewhere for men of the same origin and 
of the same race as the Irish Catholics. We find them in the 
Highlanders of Scotland. If it is race which makes civilization, 
these will not be civilized. If, on the contrary, the civilization is 
due to the religious faith, those Celts become Protestants ought to 
differ from the Celts who have remained Catholics in Ireland. The 
following is the answer which has been made to this objection in 
the Edinburgh Witness " It is asserted that the same vices and 
the same miseries are found amongst the Highlanders of Scotland, 
under the wing of Presbyterianism, which are attributed to Popery in 
Ireland, and it is inferred that if these mountaineers are not only 
as poor but as vicious as the Irish people, it is an error to suppose 
that their religion has any thing to do with their perversity. 

"We grant that the Highland Presbyterians are almost as poor as 
the Irish Papists; but we have never told that Popery was the sole 
cause of poverty. There are others, and there has been no want of 
them either in Ireland or amongst the Highlanders ; what we wish 
to prove is that Romanism is the most influential cause of ruin and 
demoralization. When comparing the poverty of the two countries, 
to be just we ought to search what have been the relative advantages 
on each side. On the one side we find a soil full of riches, and on 
the other a poor and barren soil. In the one we find a climate, the 
natural warmth of which is enough to ripen grain equal to those of 
the most beautiful corn-fields of Europe; in the other we see a 
country a prey to flies and bogs, full of wild valleys and lakes, covered 
by a sky which does not permit the sun to show itself except at 



1, Dill, pp. 29 to 32. 



rare intervals; a country in which the ice and frost only go away 
to give place to deluges of rain. In the one, the earth conceals 
mineral riches, the materials for the arts and commerce, while 
there are not in the other any of these treasures. Tn the one, we 
find natural bays and harbours ; in the other, the waves break in 
bays which afford no kind of shelter. In the one, we find great and 
numerous towns which promote industry by providing depots for 
its products ; in the other, you have to go several hundred miles, 
and sometimes to cross an arm of the sea, to discover a market. In 
the one, they have exhausted all the resources and treasures of 
legislation, and spent millions in alms; in the other, nothing has 
been done by the nation ; every thing which has been done has come 
from the spontaneous generosity and benevolence of individuals. 
Thus, in regard to everything necessary for the comfort of life and 
prosperity, these two countries are two extremes, whence seem to 
flow necessarily the poverty of the Scottish Highlanders and the 
wealth of the Irish. There certainly is a difference between the 
man who has not succeeded in turning a desert into a garden, and 
the man who has allowed a garden to change into a desert. In the 
first case, we see the labour and skill of men, unskilfully helped and 
insufficiently encouraged by the nation, unable to surmount the 
immense difficulties they have encountered ; and in the latter, we 
see all the gifts of nature and all the benefits of legislation made 
useless, and the combined influences of these two resources rendered 
incapable of stopping the constant march of the people towards the 
abyss of physical evils and social ruin. We are obliged to confess 
before these features both sad that the most painful is still that 
which represents Ireland. In fact, misery has there attained a 
degree of intensity to which nothing comparable is to be found 
amongst the Highlanders. 

" Where do we see in Scotland what is seen in Ireland ? Men 
dying of famine in hundreds and thousands, the roads and ditches 
full of the sick and dead, villages the whole population of which 
have been abandoned by the owners to the wind and rain, and 
church -yards presenting the revolting spectacle of dogs fighting for 
the ill-entered corpses? But it is not only a difference of degree 
that we wish to establish in this affair to ascertain which is the 
poorer of the two countries. We admit the fact of the excessive 
misery of the Highlanders, but we maintain that the causes above- 
mentioned, added to the feudal system which has always flourished 
in full force in the Highlands, explains the miserable condition of 
the Highlanders. It is not to any of these causes that the compli- 



m 

Gated evils of Ireland can be ascribed. Of all the evils stated, the 
only one found in Ireland is the feudal system ; and moreover its 
influence has been modified by a great variety of circumstances. 

But the decisive point of our argument is here. The Papists 
of Ireland and the Protestants of the Highlands have this much in 
common,, they a;re poor, very poor even ; but the difference is that 
crime, which is a prevailing vice with the first, is scarcely known 
amongst the second. The one are poor and criminal, the other is 
content to be poor; now we ask how does it happen that both being 
equally in a bad physical condition, and weighed down by the same 
sufferings, the Trish Catholics are flagrant violators of the law, while 
the Protestant Highlanders are exemplary for their virtuous and 
peaceable conduct! The political misgovernment of Ireland, 
however bad it may be, is nothing compared with the terrible social 
and moral disorganization which reigns there, and certainly it is 
this last evil which leaves the least ground of hope in the history of 
that people. Nowhere, on the contrary, does the moral element 
present itself in the form of social disorganization. Now, to what 
is it to be ascribed, if not to Protestantism, that this people, in the 
midst of great privations, have maintained their moral and social 
character intact, while the Irish, deprived of this preserving salt, 
and having instead of it a principle of disorder and debasement, 
have broken down into complete corruption under the weight of 
evils comparatively light. Can we have any more striking proof 
of innate vigour and purity of true Protestantism on the one hand, 
and on the other of the innate depravity and ruinous tendency of 
Fopery ? 

" But it is said : c The same vices which amongst the Trish are 
ascribed to Popery exist in all their ugliness amongst a people who 
are the most fanatical Protestants of Scotland : I mean the High- 
landers. It is this assertion, given as a fact, which has raised the 
objection. But this fact is denied by every body, and it is exactly 
the reverse of the fact. We do not say that the Highlanders are 
faultless ; what people upon the surface of the earth in circumstances 
similar to theirs would not have yielded to the temptation to 
become indolent, or have ceased to show an activity which has every 
where been rejected. But to say that the vices which have rendered 
Ireland so unhappily famous in all the countries of the world are 
to be found in all their force amongst the Scotch Highlanders, 
would be to exhibit absolute madness. Where do they find amongst 
the Highlanders the accounts of homicides and murders committed 
in broad day, of midnight robberies, of crimes which have changed 



Ill 

Ireland into a sea of blood? Is there to be found in the history of 
the Highlanders a landlord murdered by his own tenants upon his 
threshold, or of a pastor who, on returning from worship on the 
sabbath, was killed upon the public road? Where will they find 
the perjured witnesses, and the juries who refuse to give a verdict, 
paralyzing the law and arresting the course of j ustice? Where are 
the soldiers planted to keep the Highlanders in awe? W T hen the 
Queen goes into the north to live amongst these fanatical Highland- 
ers without law and without faith, how many regiments are deemed 
necessary to protect her person? Not a single soldier was posted 
in the neighbourhood of her castle 1 ! v 

We cannot conceive but one more objection possible derived from 
the different positions of the Celts in Ireland and Scotland ; the 
Irish Celts, it will be said, are Catholics; they are a majority in 
Ireland separated from the Protestants by national hatreds, while the 
Scotch Celts are Protestants; they are a minority, and united by 
their patriotism with the rest of the Scotch. It may be understood 
from this that the stain of Celtic origin has disappeared in Scotland, 
and persisted in Ireland. 

Again, so be it. Let us see then if the Celtic race in Ireland, 
amongst the most unmixt. Catholics in majority, and animated by 
political prejudices, has always withstood the civilizing influences 
of Protestant principles. 

We have ourselves travelled through Ireland at three different 
epochs. In 1853, the last time, on purpose to study the Catholic 
populations which have recently adopted the Protestant faith, and 
the following is what w^e have witnessed : in several localities, such 
as the colony of Achill, that of Dingle and of Ventry, the little town 
of Clifden, and others composed of persons formerly Catholics, we 
have seen the same men, who were recently miserable, ignorant, 
and fanatic, become Protestants, initiating themselves in active life 
by the knowledge derived from reading and by morality of conduct. 
The transformation has been complete, and the means of accom- 
plishing it unique : the preaching of the Protestant faith. 

We have seen in the island of Achill a prosperous colony firm- 
ly fixed upon a soil which was recently wild ; order, cleanliness, 
abundance, establishing themselves upon a spot w r here but yesterday 
reigned misery, idleness, and ignorance. The new buildings 
contrast there with the remains of the old. Where recently were 
huddled together a few huts of fishermen, there are now erected 



1. Witnett, 20th of January, ISbo, 



an agricultural institution, a printing-office, schools, an asylum for 
orphans, a hostel, a church, a manse, and farmers who, if not rich, 
gain their subsistence without difficulty. 

At Ventry, the same spectacle — school, church, manse, and white 
and clean farm-houses, contrasting with the only Catholic house 
which remains as a souvenir of the past ! 

At Clifden, there was an equally admirable transformation : a 
whole country torn from barbarism, its natural resources used pro- 
fitably, commerce created, workshops opened, and the soil every 
where made green by the waters of the Reformed Faith. 

At different localities there are industrial schools where they give 
the foremost place to the study of the Gospel and to apprenticeship 
to a trade in such a way as to spread at the same time over the 
country morals and prosperity : such are the things we have 
ourselves seen, and which will show to any one, who wishes to 
enjoy the spectacle, that it is neither intelligence nor heart which 
is deficient in the Irish race, but a cordial acceptance of religious 
truth. 

Moreover, to place ourselves at the point of view of the sceptic 
himself, we can say that the absence of all faith would be better 
for Tretand than the mass of superstitions and of hatreds which the 
Roman clergynourish in the heart of their flocks. Sceptical France 
is not moral, but she is intelligent, active, and to some degree 
prosperous; while grossly superstitious Ireland is neither mora], 
nor educated, nor active, nor prosperous. One half of the Catholics 
there die of famine, and the other half go to seek their bread in 
America, a Protestant country ! 

In passing from the parallel of the Two Americas to that of Ireland 
and of Scotland, we have brought together the terms of the compa- 
rison to make them more striking; here, in fact, the two countries 
were neighbours, and under the same mother-country. Let us now 
take another step in this direction; let us bring the elements of 
contrast still nearer to each other ; let us take them in the same 
little Republic, Switzerland, and compare canton by canton. 



CATHOLIC 



AND 



PROTESTANT SWITZERLAND 




Viewed in relation to our subject, the Swiss Cantons may be 
divided into three classes : Catholic, Protestant, and mixed. As it 
would be difficult and even impossible to assign to each of the two 
faiths its share of influence in the mixed Cantons, we shall abstain 
from speaking of them, and compare only the Catholic with the 
Protestant Cantons. 

But here we ought to anticipate a difficulty : admitting that cer- 
tain Cantons are superior to others in civilisation, may it not be 
presumed that they were so prior to the introduction of Protestant- 
ism, and that the superiority comes from other causes than their 
religious faith ? Our reply shall be a picture of Switzerland taken 
at a time when it was entirely Roman Catholic, and which, when 
placed in presence of Modern Switzerland, will give us the measure 
of the intervening changes. Muller, the historian par excellence of 
the Helvetian Confederation, brings these two pictures before our 
eyes : 

" Everything bad has been said respecting the misery of the 
people and the corruption of the clergy at the time of the Reformation. 
No matter whether you inquire of Catholics or Protestants, there is 
no one who will not shew you the land ill-cultivated, a population of 
monks fattened upon the sweat of the peasants, the holy monasteries 




COMPARED. 




T. I. 



9 



130 

changed into brothels, and the temples into markets of indulgences. 
No more science, no more consolation, the Church blessed no 
more : commerce was stopped in its impulse, industry in its pro- 
gress, and the middle classes in the development of their liberties. 
Lausanne had formally and loudly complained of its Chapter, repre- 
senting the life of the canons as one long orgy. No place of prosti- 
tution was comparable to their residences ; they were seen full of 
wine descending from the city of an evening , sometimes disguised as 
men of arms, striking the citizens with drawn swords, and penetrat- 
ing furtively into the houses, where they were guilty of violation 
and adultery : no fear, no shame restrained them ; oftener than once 
the holy places themselves witnessed their disorders ; they have 
been seen in the temples in the midst of divine service quarrelling, 
and giving each other great blows l ." 

£e Meanwhile, the morals of the Reformation developed with its 
faith; a fact worthy of attention. The Swiss towns twenty years 
before were what the indulgences and mercenary worship of the 
Church had made them, towns of riot and pleasure : but from the 
time when the cities glorified themselves with the name of regenerat- 
ed, they all struggled against their ancient manners. The courts 
of law and the pulpits were of one accord against disorder. The 
prostitutes were driven from the streets which they occupied. In 
all the parishes, consistories composed of laymen and ecclesiastics 
watched over the administration of the disciplinary laws, particular- 
ly the sanctity of marriage and the peace of families. The pulpit 
taught the duty of purity of life, and led the way to those lofty 
sources whence man derives the chastity and force of the soul. By 
degrees they were led back from their ancient manners to domestic 
life, to labour, to order, to simple tastes, and severe piety V 

" A great zeal was shewn for the study and especially a great love 
was manifested for Sacred Literature. The Reformers had appealed 
to the Bible as to the Charter of the Christian people. It was with 
the Bible in their hands that they had stood, up before God and 
before kings. The sacred book was reprinted in numerous editions, 
which succeeded each other rapidly. After having opened the Bible 
to the poor people, the Reformation founded schools for them because 
they could not read. It created teachers. When the pastor did not 
find any, his devotion supplied the want, and he himself taught the 
children their letters. Nothing seemed too low to these sons of the 
Gospel. Haller, Bullinger, no more neglected visiting the schools 



i. Muiler, pp. 33 to 35. — 2. Idem, pp. 186 to 188. 



131 

than the churches. They inquired not only what was taught, but 
also how it was taught. It was asserted of Bullinger that he knew 
all the scholars in the schools of Zurich. These men preached 
every day, and often several times a day. They assiduously visited 
the poor, the afflicted, the sick; and employed their days in labour 
and their nights in study. Their lamp was seldom extinguished 
before midnight, and at five o'clock they were up and again at 
work. Their correspondence was vast and active. The more their 
letters are familiar, the more do they prove their virtues. Few 
confidential epistles will stand this test; but these men had God 
for their friend, and their hearts were one. 

iC Most of these laborious men were poor. Leon Jude, when he' 
died, left 80 florins. For months he had shared his hardly-earned 
bread with the exiles; his lute was his only relaxation; and his 
wife procured by spinning day and night the food which she shared 
with the poor. 

" The sacred writings were studied by preachers who might at any 
hour find themselves called upon to answer their opponents ; by 
the magistrates, some of whom obeyed the dictates of their hearts, 
and others a necessity of the age; and by the people, of whom war 
Was no longer the sole thought. Conferences were opened upon 
market-days for the instruction of the country people f; " 

" The revival penetrated (after the Reformation) into all branches 
of knowledge. The printers had made it a rule never to allow 
any work to leave their presses of which they had not corrected the 
last proofs. The law, out of respect for the time they devoted to such 1 
noble labours, released them from the duty of mounting the city 
guard. The instant they issued from the press, the works of anti- 
quity were expounded ; at Zurich by Bibliander, Peliican, the two 
Collins; at Basle, by Bar, Plater, Borhans, Sebastian Blunster, Phi- 
gio, Myconius. It was a worship; the hand of God had impressed 
upon their brows I know not what seal of grandeur and devotion. 
The Reformation had not less raised the condition of material than 
of moral things. The time lost in taverns, the strength consumed 
in mercenary worship, was employed after the religious revolution 
in fertilising the soil or in the service of industry. The earth was 
cultivated with a more intelligent and successful hand. The 
peasant who possessed a patrimony seated himself with pride beside 
a hearth which he could call his own . What he formerly lavished 
on the purchase of indulgences or the embellishment of a cathedral, 



i. Muller, pp. 186 to 195. 



132 



he learned to apply to the improvement of his dwelling. Until then 
he had been under the thatch, as if he were only encamped upon 
the soil. Beggars overran the country; after the Reformation, it 
became a proverb (at least at Berne) that indigence was only to be 
found by the side of indolence. Labour and the law concurred in 
effacing the last traces of serfdom. A very few years sufficed to 
enable the Evangelical Cantons to distinguish themselves by their 
activity and riches from those which had preserved the old faith. 
After the Reformation, the sword hung rusting against the wall. 
The attention of every one was turned towards religion, agriculture, 
literature — the works of peace. The Catholic Cantons presented 
a very different aspect l . " 

" Every year ( in the Catholic Cantons ) when the recruiting 
sergeants made the king's gold clink, a phantom of military glory 
passed over the Alps, the taverns were full, and the echoes repeated 
nothing but the impatient cries and songs of the soldiers; in the 
villages of the Evangelical Cantons it was psalms which were sung; 
the contrast was great ; and it was remarked even in the features 
and in the costume. The traveller who passes in the present day 
from the canton de Vaud into that of Fribourg, is struck with the 
contrast of the physiognomies and the clothes. Here order with 
rich simplicity; there carelessness with foolish and gay colours. It 
is the Reformation which has produced this difference between 
populations formerly the same J . " 

" The refugees for the sake of religion divided their time between 
prayers, study, and action. They have ail the more merited well 
of our country; they reconciled the people to the Reformation. If 
any taste for study, if any love for the best things, if any zeal for 
what makes the purest glory of man, is displayed in Roman Hel- 
vetia, it is to these exiles she owes it. The knowledge of the Gospel 
spread from parish to parish, and a more enlightened faith begot 
purer morals s . " 

" Lavish of indulgences, Lucerne had sunk at the end of the 
sixteenth century down to the level of the general manners. The 
worship deceived the conscience by the performance of ceremonies; 
and thence they rushed to the taverns, to the joys of the carnival, 
or to the dances upon the mussegg. 

" The priests passed their nights in the cabarets or wine shops, and 
could not tear themselves from their beds to perform divine service. 
During the processions, they were seen with the cup hanging at 



1. Mullcr, pp. 207, 208, 211. — 2. Idem., t. XI, p. 231. — 3. Idem, p. 349. 



133 



their sides, stopping at every wayside inn to quench their thirst. 
The credulous and ignorant people were sent to sleep with fables. 
The angel of death was represented to them as a wild hunter 
followed by three red three-legged dogs running continually over 
the forests and fields 1 ." 

"The Gospel had effaced the last traces of the law of mortmain in 
the Reformed Cantons, as it had in the first centuries in the Roman 
Empire broken the chains of slavery. During the half century 
which succeeded the Reformation, the population of these Cantons 
increased one-fourth; at Zurich one-third; and nevertheless it had 
scarcely attained one-half the numbers to which liberty, agriculture, 
and industry have borne it in our day. Agriculture had made less 
progress in the Catholic Cantons, and in more than one place had 
even receded before pastoral life 2 ." 

"The progress of the epoch of course gave umbrage to the Church. 
Spain, which most faithfully represented her spirit, embraced the 
side of the bishop against the inhabitants during the struggles which 
took place in Valais. It tried to withdraw the Canton from the 
influence of the Reformation. The task was difficult. The indiffer- 
ence and the bad lives of the Valaisian priests had deprived them 
of the respect of the people ; most of them could scarcely read; and 
the churches were without splendour. When a clergyman had 
been driven out of his neighbourhood for misconduct or incapacity, 
he was sure to be consecrated in the Valais; if one in ten was 
found with some learning or some piety, it was among the 
sectaries 3 ." 

Everybody will admit without difficulty that the present state 
of Switzerland differs from that of the sixteenth century ; but is the 
difference due, as Muller affirms, to the influence of Protestantism ? 
If it is not, the improvements will be found spread equally over all 
the Cantons, or spread in accordance with a geography different from 
the religious geography : but if, on the contrary, Protestantism is the 
source of this modern civilisation, it ought to be most especially 
remarkable in the Reformed Cantons. This conducts us directly to 
our subject: the comparison of the Cantons of the two communions. 
First of all, we give the complete list of the two Cantons, with their 
populations as divided between the two religions. We prefer to 
take this table from Malte-Brun, because it relates to an average 
date in comparison with the dates of the documents we shall have 
to quote. 

1. Muller, t. xil, p. 171. — 2. Mem, pp, 3H to 343, — 3. Idem, t. XII, p. 371'. 



134 



Religious Statistics for 1822. 

















NUMBER 


NUMBER 




NUMBER 


NUMBER 


CATHOLIC 






PROTESTANT 








OF 


OF 




OF 


OF 


CANTONS. 






CANTONS. 








PROTESTANTS. 


CATHOLICS. 




PROTESTANTS. 


CATHOLICS. 


Ticino . . . . 





93.800 


Zurich .... 


191,700 


1,350 


Frifioiirg. . . . 


5,100 


67,400 


Vaud 


155,000 


3.200 


Lucerne .... 





103,900 




300,500 


41,700 


Sehwit? .... 





34.900 


Appenzell . . . 


41,200 


13,800 


Underwald . . . 





24,800 


GlafiS 


23,845 


3,285 


Soleure .... 


4,200 


49,500 


Neuchatel . . . 


50.000 


2,200 


Uri 





12,000 


Basle. . . . 





5,900 


Zug 




15,000 


Schaffhausen . . 


26,900 


200 


Valais 


2 


67,400 




27,080 


14,400 



Mixed Cantons \. 

Number of Protestants. Number of Catholics. 

Saint-Gall. . . 81,829 61,371 

Grisons. . . .- 49,000 34,500 

Argovie . . . 76,500 68,800 

Thurgovie. . . 63,900 19,000 

After deducting from our table the four mixed Cantons, there 
remain eighteen Cantons which can fortunately be separated into 
tWM categories of equal numbers. We shall therefore group them 
two and two, and oblige ourselves to place in each parallel the two 
Cantons most provocative of comparison by their geographical 
proximity, and by the equal importance of their populations. 
Paying as much attention as possible to this double rule , we succeed 
in forming the following nine groups : 



I. 


Ticino Catholic 


and 


Zurich Protestant. 


11. 


Fribourg Catholic 


and 


Vaud Protestant. 


III. Lucerne Catholic 


and 


Berne Protestant. 


IV. 


Schwitz Catholic 


and 


Appenzell Protestant. 


V. 


Underwald Catholic 


and 


Glaris Protestant. 


VI. 


Soleure Catholic 


and 


Neuchatel Protestant. 


VII. 


Uri Catholic 


and 


Basle Protestant. 


VIII. Zug Catholic 


and 


Schaffhausen Protestant. 


IX. 


Valais Catholic 


and 


Geneva Protestant. 



1. Although Geneva may now be placed, strictly speaking, among the mixed, owe have placed 
it among the Protestant Cantons ; partly because Geneva "was much less Gaihlic at the time 
of which we treat, and also because the Catholic population, consisting chiefly of the working- 
classes, has never bad any sliare m the direction of public affairs. 

Appenzell might also be classed among the mixed cantons; but it will only be the Protestant 
part that we shall compare with Schwitz ; further on, we shall compare together the two parts 
of the canton. 



135 

I. Tessen Catholic, and Zurich Protestant. — Let us listen to 
Count Walsh, the champion of Catholicism, upon the Tessenese : 

" This race of men is handsome, and evidently belongs to the 
privileged races of the South, for whom nature has done so much, 
and who do so little for themselves. The country moreover is poor, 
if we except some districts, such as Bellinzona, Lugano, and Locarno. 
The inhabitants emigrate in crowds every year to seek among 
strangers the means of existence, and in most of the villages during 
the summer season nobody remains except the old women, the old 
men, and the children. It is remarked that the Tessenese, who 
have made their fortunes elsewhere, do not return like the other 
Swiss to enjoy it in their country V- So much for the people, now for 
their guides : " Fines are exacted for the profit of the magistrates 
called Baillis, or bailiffs of the cantons, who inflict them • they have 
been known to present occasions to their administres to commit 
certain high-taxed offences, and to give premiums to provocateurs 
from Milan, who had been brought by themselves on purpose. 
Justice was not administered, but sold. Bunstetten says, some 
judges took money from both parties, and others more scrupulous 
sold their decisions in good faith. It is but just to say that in the 
midst of these infamies and exactions, the two cantons of Berne and 
Zurich (both Protestant) always made themselves remarkable by the 
virtue and probity of their magistrates . The lower classes of Tessen 
are too ignorant and too demoralised to know how to be free 2 . " 

" Tessen presents a singular phenomenon in Europe: that of 
a population which has notably diminished since the end of the last 
century. Prior to the Revolution, it had 160,000 inhabitants, and 
now there are not more than 90,000. The decrease amounted to 
about 3,000 souls from 1817 to 1827. Has emigration increased? 
or is it because agricultural labour, which is left to the women, 
makes them old before their time ? The Tessenese do not trouble 
themselves either with the culture or the multiplication of their 
trees. . . they are noted for their want of cleanliness. . . M . Bunstetten 
says jocularly that a Swiss German pig would refuse to enter the 
house of a Tessenese peasant. Indeed, from the first night I slept 
there, I saw in fact that the inns were not kept with the same care 
and cleanliness as elsewhere. 

" Shall 1 own that this promised land is robbed of its enchant- 
ment to my eyes by the men who inhabit it? In fact, it is difficult 
to see anything more repulsive than the aspect of the peasant of 



t. Walsh, t. I, pp. 459, 460. — 2. Idem, pp. 459, 460. 



m 

this Canton. I was much struck by it. His countenance, always 
ignoble and false, would it is obvious become on provocation ferocious. 
His tattered garments, which shew more negligence and dirtiness 
than misery, augment the repugnance inspired by his appearance. 
Perhaps I wrong these poor people of Tessen, but in truth it seems to 
me that a band of brigands could nowhere be raised more easily 
than here ; indeed, in this respect it is said the inhabitants of the 
valley of Verzasca are not in any way inferior to those of the most 
sadly celebrated passes of Calabria and the Apennines. 

" Tessen isapreyto rapacious and ignorant &<m7/w or tax-gatherers. 
The country is devastated by epidemic maladies, and by bands of 
brigands. The population is Italian, and is inferior to all the other 
Swiss populations in morality, knowledge, activity, and comfort; 
agriculture is neglected ; there is little industry , and more new 
laws than improvements in morals 1 . " 

To the testimony of the journalist of Charles X, let us add that of 
his minister : " Whatever may be the future of Magadino (Canton of 
Tessen), the population which begs upon the only road which leads 
to it does not incline us to form a favourable opiuion of the inhabit- 
ants which it will have. This population is wnak, feeble, dirty, and 
ragged. It follows with inveterate importunities the persons from 
whom it hopes to extract an alms. It shews itself to be what a 
population might be expected to be which almost exclusively 
furnishes Europe with showmen of bears, moukeys, and camels, and 
persons who trade in this sort of exhibitions in the fairs. Instead 
of doiug as they do in China, where they throw into the stream 
which Hows past their cabin the unfortunate creature which would 
add to the embarrassments of its parents, here they bring it up well 
or ill, and as soon as its limbs can support it to the nearest town 
they place it upon the road which leads to it. A few chesnuts and 
a bit of black bread pay its pretensions to the paternal, and a kiss 
perhaps a tear to the maternal, heritage 

The description which we have read is sufficiently significative to 
render more than probable the traits which M. Picot adds to (his 
picture, which is already somewhat sombre. The following passage 
relates to an evil to which the misery and the recklessness of the 
inhabitants are not such strangers as might be supposed at a first 
glance : 

"The industry and national spirit of Tessen are not as yet what 
they ought to be. The inhabitants donot extract all the benefiisthey 



1. Walsh, 1. 1, p. 330.. — 2. FHaussez. t. i, pp. 31 i to 314. 



137 



ought from their soil and geographical position. Nowhere are 
more deformed men to be met in consequence of the negligence 
with which they nurse their infants. Cretinism or goitre exists in 
their valleys, and;cases of it are even still more numerous in Valais 
and in Savoy. Men of a very advanced age are rarely seen among 
them . Bad food and the immoderate use of wine and brandy cause 
premature death. They have natural wit and an imagination full 
of fire, but also prejudice and ignorance; few of them are addict- 
ed to study, and they spend as little money as possible on books ; 
and thence, although endowed with the most felicitous dispositions, 
they want the love of work, industry, and resources to such a 
degree that they are inferior to the other populations of Switzerland 
in morality and comfort, in spite of all that nature has done for 
them. Crimes are unhappily common in the Canton. A great 
number of the population do not care for their native soil, which 
makes them without fear of expatriation, and disinclined to observe 
the laws as they are observed by the citizens of countries in which 
patriotism has great sway. Several causes contribute to the bad 
cultivation of the soil in lessen; such as a defective knowledge of 
rural economy, and the want of hands, produced by emigration. 
The inhabitants of Tessen are destitute of industry, which is a conse- 
quence of their ignorance. Manufactories are not found among 
them, except at Lugano and Mendrisio. The trade even in the pro- 
ducts of their country is not altogether in their hands; it may be 
remarked also that they are generally poor; they want good agri- 
cultural utensils; their carts with wheels, which are made of a single 
piece of wood, have all the clumsy simplicity of the remotest ages. 
The use of fire-engines is unknown to them ; they do not know 
how to erect breakwaters against the fury of torrents ; and in other 
respects they are behind the present state of knowledge. The emi- 
grations, as we have seen, injure considerably the cultivation of the 
land; and thevvomen, in the absence of their husbands, suffer more 
than the most miserable beasts of burden. All the emigrants are 
replaced by foreign workmen,who take away from the Canton a share 
of the advantage which it might reap from the products of its soil." 
This circumstance will appear all the more regrettable to the 
reader, that he has seen above all the natural advantages assigned 
to the country by Catholic writers; wherever misery is found which 
the resources of the soil ought to prevent, the misery must be traced 
to the principles of the inhabitants themselves; and it is this which 
our author seems to insinuate when he adds almost immediately : 
" The Catholic religion has been up to the end of the eighteenth 



138 



century accompanied in Tessen with superstitions, and even the 
most revolting abuses. Assassins found asylums and protection 
in the churches and convents. Justice was not better adminis- 
tered in other respects; and honest men trembled in the midst of 
a smiling and fertile country which nature seems to have wished 
to make a paradise. The educational condition of the Canton is 
not brilliant. Many communes are without primary schools, and 
it is remarked that the cures do not give themselves much trouble 
about the education of the children of their parishes. Hence comes 
the ignorance which reigns over the mass of the nation. Many 
first magistrates of Communes do not know how to read and write. 
There is not in the Canton any council for the particular inspection 
of public instruction, any literary society, any society of educated 
men, and scarcely any library. The inhabitants of Tessen are 
behind their age in regard to the useful arts f. " 

Without entering into the same details, other writers allow the 
same thoughts to be seen. According to Sommerlatt 2 , the brutalis^ 
ing labours and the unwholesome nurture of the women bring 
about the degeneracy of the human species; land naturally fertile 
produces almost nothing in unskilful hands; and public instruction 
is in such a backward state that it will not bear a comparison with 
that of the other Cantons. According to Buchon 3 , this country is 
infinitely beneath Germany in useful knowledge. Malte-Brun 4 
describes the country, in regard to knowledge and civilisation, as 
most miserable and most backward. And finally Cambry 5 , at the 
sight of so much misery united to so much superstition, cries : 
" What filth, what yellow, black, and livid complexions 6 ! The 
coast of Canabio is embellished with houses painted like the in- 
sides of chapels. Jesus Christ, the Virgin, and Saint Christopher 
and the Holy Spirit may there be seen mingled with cordeliers, 
capucins, and hermits; the usual means adopted by Catholicism to 
attract towards earthly saints the respect and the adoration which is 
due only to the God of Heaven. The rapacity, the rudeness, the 
misery, the very great filthiness and the infectious odours shocked 
us upon intering into the town 7 . " 

Not far from this Canton of Tessen, formed by Catholicism, what 
will Zurich be found to be,, which was educated by the Reforma- 
tion? Let us hear the same travellers, who in the same day may 
have passed perhaps from the one Canton to the other, and who 

1. Picot, pp. 445 to 465. — 2. Sommerlatt, p. 486, 492, 496. — 3. Buchon, p. 200. — 
4. Malte-Brun, t. VII, p. 186. — 3. Cambrv, pp. 313. 322, 323. — 6. Idem, p. 313. — 
7. Idem, pp. 322, 323. 



139 



have therefore applied the same judgment and the same measure 
to the two countries : 

"Ever since the middle ages/' says Malte-Brun, "Zurich has 
heen celebrated by the talents of Zuinglius, the Reformer, and the 
distinguished men to which it has given birth. It suffices to name 
S. Gessner,Lavater, and Pestallozzi, to justify its titles to celebrity. 
Its schools are numerous, its university is in good repute ; its 
learned societies would do honour to more important cities. It 
contains only 11,000 or 12,000 inhabitants \ " 

"The present generation offers at Zurich to the eyes of the Ca- 
tholic Walsh an assemblage of learned men, writers, and artists, 
whose reputation is not confined within the narrow limits of their 
country 2 . " 

" There, more than in any other great town in Switzerland, may 
be remarked the independence and the zeal for liberty which 
distinguished the founders of that brave nation. The magistrates, 
less submissive than elsewhere to the influence of foreign powers, 
and above corruption, consult in general the real advantage of their 
Canton, and the Helvetian Confederation. Zurich has preserved up 
to the present day a very great preponderance in the general Diet, 
which she owes more to the idea which the other states have of her 
republican opinions, than to her real power. They regard her as 
the most independent and just of all the Cantons 3 . 

"In consequence of the unceasing attention which the government 
has given to the education of youth since the Reformation, several 
learned men have appeared at Zurich in the different branches of 
literature, and there is not a town in all Switzerland where letters 
are more encouraged, nor where they are cultivated with more 
success 4 /' 

"The principal object of the Natural History and Physical Science 
Society at Zurich is to encourage and perfect practical agriculture. 
For this purpose, the members correspond with the landlords in the 
different parts of the Canton, make tours in the different districts 
in turns, invite to Zurich the most intelligent farmers, inform 
themselves respecting the rural economy of each of them, give 
them instructions, offer prizes for improvements in cultivation, 
furnish the poor peasants with pecuniary supplies, and communi- 
cate to the public the result of their researches and observations 5 /' 

"Zurich has been called the Athens of Switzerland, and has pro- 
duced a great number of learned men, of authors, poets, and 

1. Malte-Brun, t. vn, p. 130. — 2. Walsh., p. 88. — 3. Coxe, t. r, p. 85, 86. — k. idem, 

p. 91. — 5. Idem, p. 10], 102. 



celebrated artists. A commercial, industrial, and learned city, 
Zurich has purchased rather than conquered the districts which 
form its Canton. Its inhabitants are distinguished for their 
■wisdom, their ability, their prudence, their benevolence, and their 
good humour. The Canton owes its fertility not to the nature of 
the soil, but to the activity of man. Its industry is very consider- 
able, most of the workmen being both labourers and vine-keepers. 
The inhabitants of the Canton are generally laborious, friends of 
order, economical, fond of the arts and mechanical inventions, and 
benevolent. Zurich was one of the centres of the Reformation 1 . " 

" Do not fancy that the luxury of mind is in this city the lot of only 
a few opulent families; a wholesome education is here generally 
spread among all classes of society; there is not perhaps a people in 
Europe who read so much as the inhabitants of Zurich ; 1 have seen 
in that city devoted to industry and commerce a book upon every 
counter, and almost in every hand ; and I would not be surprised 
if the humblest artisan of Zurich had not as much literature as 
some of our beaux esprits of Paris. After that, as they do not write 
in this country for the sake of writing, le bel esprit not merely does 
not constitute a particular profession at Zurich, but does not distin- 
guish any one, and the title of man of letters, « homme de lettres, » 
which is taken among us by those who have no other, is not given 
to anybody, because there every one pursues some honest trade. 
A man who knew only how to make pamphlets and operas would 
not find a place there even among the tribe of weavers ; he would 
be good for nothing, not even to amuse the leisure of the populace, 
as there are not at Zurich neither comedians, nor mountebanks, nor 
newsmen 2 ." 

"The continually increasing progress of commerce and of indus- 
try, the acquisition of a rich and fertile territory, an excellent 
public spirit, the fruit of moderation and labour, morals pure and even 
severe, joined to an advanced culture of the mind, were the argu- 
ments by which the partisans of the ancient government of Zurich 
vindicated their attachment to the institutions of their forefathers, 
when the Directory sent an army there to proclaim the rights 
of man 3 . " 

" In this country the manners serve as correctives and supplements 
to the laws. The balance of power does not depend there upon an 
equation, nor the fate of the state upon an arithmetical combina- 
tion, and it may be said that the twenty-six votes of Zurich are still 



i. Rougeiuont, p. 310. — 2. Raoul Rochettc, t. ri, p. 310. — 3. idem, p. 315. 



141 



at the present time the oracle of the nation as they were when the 
whole nation resided at Zurich *. " 

" The members of the demagogy are still in a minority in the 
councils of Zurich; salutary concessions, just regard for all reason- 
able pretensions, a moderation full of force and dignity on the 
part of those who administer the State, reduce their adversaries to 
play the ungrateful part of a legitimate opposition. The clergy of 
Zurich are imbued with excellent political principles, as they are 
gifted with all the virtues of their profession, and their actual chief, 
Hesse, maintains by the authority of his irreproachable life, as well 
as by his ministry, the ancient doctrines of a Church, distinguished 
in all times for the purity of its morals and the severity of its 
maxims \ " 

"Zurich is still a very moral town in comparison with those which 
surround it, and there does not exist perhaps in Europe a city, great 
or small, which might not be profited by acquiring what remains. 
Opinion, the last check uponbad morals, which restrains them when 
the fear of God is weakened in the heart, has lost almost nothing of 
its ancient severity. The chiefs of the State submit to it in their 
conduct like the humblest citizens V 

" I should never have done about Zurich if 1 were to tell you all 
I have seen agreeable, instructive, and above all honourable for this 
city; but everything must have an end, even the most legitimate 
eulogiums, and this letter is already so long that [ fear it will appear 
too long even at Zurich \ " 

"The simplicity of antique manners characterises the Zurichese. 
Jf nothing is more respectable than the civil condition of this Canton, 
nothing is also more interesting than its moral condition, nor more 
touching than the spectacle of the interior of the families. Conjugal 
affection is there both a sentiment and a custom. Filial piety has 
there something of the respect which was the virtue of the children 
of the patriarchal times K" 

" The inhabitants of the town as of the Canton of Zurich are ge- 
nerally industrious and active ; they all like work. The child oc- 
cupies himself with it as well as (he old man. Those who do not 
devote themselves to letters, apply themselves with great activity 
to commerce 

"Zurich has always governed with equal equity and wisdom the 
subject communes of the Republic, knows how to maintain them in 
a respectful submission, and to make the Canton flourish by an 



t. Raonl Rochette, t. II, p. 317. — 2. idem, p. 322. — 3. idem, p. 329. — 4. idem, p. 335. 
— 3. idem, p. 188. — 6. idem, p. 148. 



142 



enlightened administration. The subjects have rarely had to 
reproach their magistrates with acts of severity or injustice. They 
acknowledge the integrity of their administrators V 

" What smiling scenes, " cries the tourist Cambry, (( environs the 
Lemat which leaves the lake and encircles the town of Zurich ! It 
is adorned with a beautiful amphitheatre, covered with gardens. 
Fortune seems to reside there as a wise and happy mediocrity. In 
the west, the riches of nature are unimaginable. What dales! 
what culture ! what abundance and industry ! It is a country of 
enchantment. Zurich and its beautiful environs appear to me to 
be the asylum of wisdom, moderation, comfort, and happiness V 

" Let us leave the town, and traverse the country; we can scarcely 
go a hundred paces, without seeing some pretty cottage, or meeting 
peasants who salute as they pass. Every part of the ground is culti- 
vated to the highest degree of perfection 3 ." 

' ' We learned with pleasure that every village had a schoolmaster 
paid entirely or partly by the government, and a child is scarcely to 
be seen in the whole Canton who has not learned to read and write. 

ei A little further on we entered into a cottage, the mistress of which 
presented us with milk and cherries, and placed upon the table 
nine or ten large silver spoons 4 . ' ? 

f* The town of Winterthur is small, and its inhabitants, about 
2,000, are extremely industrious. The schools of this little state are 
well endowed and regulated. The public library contains a small 
collection of books, and a great number of Roman coins and 
medals 8 . 

" In the Canton of Zurich the population, which is half agricultural 
and half manufacturing, enjoys as great an abundance of food as it 
is possible to wish ; and the interior of the houses proves the com- 
fortable condition of their inhabitants 6 . " 

Let us recall to mind the miserable state of agriculture in fertile 
Tessen, and we shall all the better appreciate what the Zurichese 
have made of a naturally sterile soil, in the words of Sommerlatt : 
'[ Zurich is one of the most important Cantons of the Swiss Confede- 
ration, not merely as the directing Canton, and in regard to political 
influence, but in regard to extent, population, education, and 
industry V 

is Zurich is in general more indebted for its productiveness to the 
industrious activity of man than to nature ; but it is not only the 
indefatigable toil of the Zurichese which has shed such blessings 

1. Zscbokke, t. n, p. 291. — 2. Caiubry, t. n, pp. 322, 323. — 3. Coxe, t. i, p. 113. — 
h. idem, p. 117. — 5. idem, p. 129. — 6. SOMllierlatt, p. 123. — 7. idem, p. 126. 



143 



upon their country, it is above all an enlightened rural economy and 
the zeal of scientific societies, which of late years have occupied 
themselves with the progress of agriculture. The spirit Of industry 
and activity at Zurich is remarkable. Its manufactures and com- 
merce have attained a high rank V 

"The Zurichese are upright, hospitable, and benevolent. If 
their intelligence has distinguished itself in the mechanical and 
industrial sphere, the spirit of this people has shone still more 
in the sphere of the arts and sciences. Zurichese names have 
acquired a merited celebrity in all branches 2 . In an ecclesiastical 
point of view, the predominant system is the Presbyterian, profess- 
ing with very few exceptions the Reformed religion 3 . Zurich is 
placed in direct communication with the neighbouring communes 
by means of a multitude of new and tasteful erections k . " 

We have seen Catholic Tessen and Protestant Zurich, as estimated 
by the same authors; let the reader judge them in his turn, while 
we for our parts pass on towards our second comparison : 

II. Catholic Fribourg and Protestant Vaud. — We have some good 
to say of Catholic Fribourg, at least for the past ; we can therefore 
give our attention to a Protestant author : 6 6 The downfall of 
liberty in the Canton involved that of the national industry. Prior 
to the establishment of the Secret Chamber, Fribourg had numerous 
linen manufactures, which spread comfort in the country. It an- 
nually sent more than 26,000 pieces of linen to Venise. One 
single quarter of the town, it was estimated, contained more than 
2,000 workmen employed in tanning leather. All that industry 
fell. 

" The inhabitants of the rural districts near the town, and known 
under the name of the old territory, deplore also the loss of liberty, 
and lament to see themselves reduced to the condition of subjects 
under a despotic regime. Deaf to all complaints, the government 
has constantly punished as acts of sedition the statements of griev- 
ances which simple citizens or even entire communes permitted 
themselves to address to it 8 . " 

After these lines of Zschokke, we need not be surprised to hear 
from the lips of the Baron d'Haussez the following avowals: 
" Everywhere in the environs of Fribourg the view is arrested by 
fields and meadows which are very ill-cultivated, and by crops 
which excite a presentiment of indigence. Beggary re-appears, 
and the dress of the wretched creatures who exercise it show that 

1. Sommei'latt, p. 127. — 2. idem, p. 129; — 3. idem, p. 130. — 4. idem, p. 151. — 
5. Zschokke, t. n, pp. 250 and 251. 



144 



it is more the result of speculation than of real want. The town 
of Fribourg is destitute of the prospect of improvement, because 
there is nothing to attract a population different from that already 
fixed there by habit. Very ugly houses, distributed across a country 
the inequalities of which injure the circulation more than they 
contribute to the beauty of the views, form altogether a monoton- 
ous and unattractive scenery. The agricultural population of the 
Canton of Fribourg cannot be enjoying any great degree of comfort. 
The cultivation allows to be seen the signs of a negligence which 
is found wherever you may carry your observations. The public 
administration does not escape any more than private habits from 
the reproach of inertness. The roads, made without intelligence 
and kept without care, contrast disadvantageous^ with those of the 
Protestant Cantons upon their frontiers. The churches and public 
edificies are in a bad condition. Everything bears the mark of dis- 
order, improvidence, and discomfort *. " 

After the words of the minister of Charles X, let us quote those of 
M. Raoul Rochette, not less worthy of confidence in the eyes of a 
Roman Catholic : " Fribourg is a town very little attractive in itself. 
The want of population, and consequently of activity and movement, 
does not help to weaken the painful impression which the traveller 
experiences there. This void is felt, as it were, by all the senses 
at once, from the profound silence which reigns everywhere, and 
from the grass which grows in the streets and public places, and it 
penetrated and saddens the soul; on the whole, when we have 
contemplated the exterior and the situation of Fribourg, the best 
thing to be done is to get out of it. 

" The Canton is wholly Catholic, and it might be by its extent one 
of the most important in Switzerland, if it were better cultivated ; 
but T have remarked upon a great part of the road 1 gone over lands 
from which they might have derived greater advantages, and I have 
been able to convince myself, when crossing the Cantons of Neufchatel 
and Fribourg, that the reproach which is made here to the Catholics 
of being less industrious than the Protestants is not altogether 
without foundation ; 1 shall return to this point when speaking of 
the government of the country. The Fribourgese are extremely 
devout. My first impression at the sight of all the coarse imitations 
of the most respectable objects (images, crucifixes), was a movement 
of surprise only moderately pious, and still further from being 
agreeable 2 . " 



1. D'Haussez, t. i, p. 206. — 2. Raoul Rochette, t. i, pp. 43 to 48. 



" If any reproach can be addressed to llie government of Fribourg, 
it is that of a want of vigour, activity and industry. I have already 
observed that many of the estates were badly cultivated; and I have 
since been assured that a great number are still uncultivated. In- 
dustry and commerce are scarcely more advanced; everything 
languishes; everything drags in the capital ; the roads are ill-kept, 
and the country is in want of the outlets which might be easily 
procured. Finally, the government has with inconceivable indiffer- 
ence tolerated and even promoted the emigration of a great number 
of Fribourgese families, which have left the country in mourning 
and deprived it of many of its most useful hands. Fribourg alone 
has contributed nearly one-half to the formation of the colony derived 
from different Swiss Cantons which is established in Brazil \ " 

"Agriculture, confining itself to the flat country of the Canton, is 
far from being sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants, 
who are obliged to procure supplies from without 2 . Their com- 
merce and manufactures are of small importance 

"There is very little industry in the country ; the roads have been 
ill kept up until of late years. The inhabitants are ignorant and 
superstitious. The chief city counts one ecclesiastic for every 18 
inhabitants; this Canton has produced very few celebrated men V 

"Superstition is still in all its force at Fribourg, pious farces being 
performed still in its church as they were all over Europe in the 
thirteenth century. At Pentecost or Whitsuntide, for example, the 
Holy Spirit, a radient wooden pigeon, descends from the sky upon 
the Canons who hold the wax candle in their hand, the material em- 
blem of the gift of the tongues and of lights which in the form of 
tongues of fire established themselves in the minds of the apostles 5 /*' 

A circumstance which is astonishing, although it has been several 
times reproduced in the course of our observations, is the appear- 
ance of a bright point upon this sombre picture — the reformed 
district of Morat. An eulogium interrupts the unanimous concert of 
accusations and of sadness, and this praise is bestowed precisely upon 
the only portion of the country which professes the evangelical 
worship : " The prefecture of Morat, the population of which is 
Protestant, is one of the best cultivated of the Canton, the inhabit- 
ants distinguishing themselves from their neighbours by superior 
agriculture and more industry 6 . " 

It would be difficult for a people to be very advanced in civilisa- 
tion when their religious condition is such as is described in the 



i. Raoul Rochette, vol. I, pp. 57, 58. — 2. idem, p. 313. — 3. idem, p. 320. — -I. Roilge- 
inont, p. 317. — 3. Cambrv, p. 153. — 6. Picot, p. 31j. 

10 



146 



following lines by the Catholic Zmiaaben : "/ Every year, upon 
the Day of Kings, jour des Rois, an exhibition is made upon a 
platform of King Herod consulting with the doctors of the law 
concerning the appearance of the Star of the East. The three magi 
or the three kings, one of whom has his face blackened, arrive upon 
horseback. Herod orders the prophecies to be read respecting the 
appearance of the Messiah, and disputes with the Pharisees relative 
to their interpretation. The Virgin Mary, seated upon an ass, and 
holding the infant Jesus, parades the town meanwhile, followed by 
Saint Joseph, whilst a brilliant star attached to a cord stretched from 
one end of the street to the other escorted them in the air i . " 

But it is time to cross the frontier ; let us enter into the neighbour- 
ing Canton; the change is so rapid and so complete, that in truth it 
seems as if they had brought us a torch in the midst of darkness. 

" We perceived in the distance the slopes of the Vaud country, 
the best cultivated in all Switzerland 2 . The fields displayed every- 
where order, activity, and comfort. What agreeable ideas of repose 
and retirement are given to the agitated traveller by those rustic 
residences so well placed near those clumps of elms, those orchards, 
and those fertile meadows ! What milk ought to be furnished by 
the numerous flocks half concealed in the thick grass ! Luxury and 
opulence dot not reign in the towns which yon traverse, but neither 
do rags and misery give pain there to the friends of the poor and of 
equality. Fresh and calm complexions, and a simple and slow 
walk, shows the absence of the boiling passions which elsewhere 
form the torments of life 3 . " 

" Nature had not given anything to the Vaudois on the Vevay 
side, except rocks and sunshine ; but they have cultivated these 
mountains and supplied them with earth which they have had to 
carry from a distance; now they have fields, vines, and meadows 
of the greatest fertility; a multitude of artificial terraces rising in 
pyramids from the foot of the lake support the lands, and present to 
the eye a most delightful amphitheatre ; you ascend upon the left of 
the road to the rustic village which is almost concealed by the 
walnut, chestnut, and apple trees which surround it \ " 

" How all these places are adorned by the aspect of a population 
established in the midst of the richest and most varied cultivation, 
whose costume displays comfort, whose air reveals happiness, whose 
proud and quick step betrays the spirit of independence and energy! 
There are no beggars, and scarcely any objects for the exercise of 



1. Zurlauben, t. n, p. 224. — 2. Canibry. p. 25. — 3, idem, p. 78. — 4. idem, pp. 85, 86. 



147 

benevolence ; the resources which, however fertile it may be, the soil 
refuses to a part of its inhabitants, industry procures them ; the 
cultivation of the land and the anxieties of commerce have not 
absorbed the activity of the Vaudois so as to make them negligent 
of the lofty wants of intelligence, and in that happy land mental 
occupations go hand in hand with the manual labours which ferti- 
lise it. Everybody knows here how to read and write well, and 
almost everyone, no matter of what station, procures for himself the 
pleasure of habitual reading. Up to the present time it must be 
admitted this instruction has not led to any deviation from the 
customs to which the country owes the wellbeing it enjoys. It has 
not made them ashamed of their habitual labours, nor led them to 
abandon them for apparently more elevated careers ; they remain 
cultivators, workmen, merchants, and they are not withdrawn by 
disgust or disdain from the toils which these professions impose; 
they preserve even the dresses of them and do not blush for them V 

" The Canton of Vaud is particularly renowned for its cultiva- 
tion and for its vineyards, which produce an excellent wine. Nature 
is there at once agreeable and severe; it is there that more than any- 
where else she spreads out her green verdure and green shades in 
the midst of which clear and limpid streams roll everywhere their 
silver waters. This part of Switzerland is one of those where the 
purity of manners is best preserved; everything there breathes of 
the peace of the early ages. Almost everywhere an air of comfort 
and contentment reigns; nobody is poor there, and nowhere do 
you meet with beggars. The inhabitants are laborious and sober, 
proud and spiritual; their habits gentle and regular; everything 
tends to keep up among them the love of the domestic hearth; it 
is sacred for them, and it is very rarely that corruption comes to 
trouble their happy homes. There is in the single parish of Mon- 
treux more zeal for the general good than in many cities. A li- 
brary is to be found there, established by the inhabitants then> 
selves: a reading-room, where they have the newspapers; and 
several schools, one of them for music." 

" There is not a height, if you have the courage to climb it, which 
does not offer you a striking picture of animation, freshness, and 
life. Families are to be seen everywhere laboriously and zealously 
occupied, and at some steps from them stands the hospitable cottage 
where the stranger is received with that frankness which charms 
at once, and commands confidence. This hospitality is never paid 



i. D'Haussez, vol. i, pp. 107, 109. 



148 



for in money at Montreux : beware of offering it ; they will regard it 
as an insult; it is there only, under these humble roofs, that is 
found the pure and simple life which recalls (he manners of the 
patriarchs 1 . " 

(i The road from Lausanne to Vevay stretches along the sides of 
the mountains, in the midst of numerous vineyards. The industry 
of the Swiss is nowhere to be seen more advantageously than in 
that neighbourhood; the mountains, which were formerly sterile 
and inaccessible rocks, are now entirely covered with vines. They 
have carried earth from a great distance to the place to create a 
soil, and they have heaped up stones which, arranged symmetri- 
cally, serve as walls 2 . " 

"In the plain/' saysM. deRougemont, "a transport traffic takes 
place; the inhabitants there have simplicity and frankness 3 . " 

'? The good society, the urbanity, and the comfort of the' inha- 
bitants render Vevay dear to strangers. There is a very good 
college, and boarding schools for young persons of both sexes V 

ei I ought to say that I have seen in the Vand country nothing 
but the unequivocal signs of an always increasing prosperity, and 
I add that I was all the more struck with it that I had carried to 
Lausanne unfavourable prejudices B . " 

" The advantages of an enlightened and active administration 
always penetrating more and more into all classes of society fortifies 
patriotism in proportion to the wellbeing they diffuse. It is sur- 
prising how in so few years, and with such limited means, the go- 
vernment has been able to form the establishments of public 
utility, elementary schools in every commune, hospitals for the 
sick and the insane, prisons for civil and criminal offences, superb 
bridges and roads, and which already rival the most beautiful 
works of this sort by the Bernese Republic; and above all the agri- 
cultural institutions, which are daily improving the cultivation 
and developing the private industry of the Canton. The cultiva- 
tion of this country has in unencumbered hands made rapid pro- 
gress; the vitality of the social body shews itself here by regular 
movements, by sustained activity equally remote from lassitude 
and turbulence ; and the words liberty and country, which might 
pass elsewhere for cruel irony, or for an ambitious device, are here 
not only imprinted upon the money and upon the seal of the State, 
but they are engraved upon the hearts and expressed in all the 
actions of the citizens 6 . " 

1. Madame Aiagon, pp. 18, 22. — 2. Coxc, vol. u, pp. 78, 79. — 3. Roiigemont, p. 331. — 
4. Soiumerlatt, p. 525. —5. Maoul Rochettc, vol. n, p. 27. — 6. Raoul Rochette, pp. 30, 31. 



149 



" It is astonishing how the taste for reading has gained ground, 
of late years, in the Vaud country and the country of Neufchatel, 
not onJy among the middle classes, but also among the peasants. 
The peasants of these countries have facilities for acquiring books 
of all sorts. The printing presses of Geneva, of Lausanne, Yverdun, 
and of Neufchatel, publish nearly all the foreign books which 
express the tastes and the opinions of the Swiss K 

f * Nothing can be more agreeable than the part of the Vaud 
country which borders the Lake of Geneva. We admire its rich 
and charming banks, and are astonished at the quantity of towns in 
the neighbourhood, and the numerous populations which inhabit 
them. An enrapturing picture is formed by the adorned and 
smiling dales on all sides; and this country, which is everywhere 
cultivated and everywhere fruitful, offers to the labourers, the 
shepherds, and vinedressers, the certain fruits of their soils, which 
are not devoured by the greedy tax-gatherers. Chablais (which is 
Catholic, as everybody knows) upon the opposite coast, is a country 
not less favoured by nature, but which does not present to view 
anything but a spectacle of misery. We can discern distinctly the 
different effects of the two governments upon the wealth, the number 
of men, and the lot they enjoy. It is thus that the earth opens its 
fertile bosom and lavishes its treasures upon the happy nations 
which 'cultivate it for themselves. She seems to smile and become 
animated at the sweet spectacle of liberty * 2 . " 

" The peasant of the Vaud country frequents very assiduously 
his parish church upon Sundays, and is careful to avoid the public- 
houses: those of the Canton of Fribourg do not observe the same 
regularity; their conduct presents a remarkable contrast; upon 
Sundays and fete-days they go into the territory of Berne to dance 
and drink in the public-houses 3 . " 

Let us finish this Canton with a short summary, made not by a 
passing traveller but by a learned geographer, who examines and 
meditates to write at leasure : 

" One of the Cantons the most important for its territorial riches 
is that of Vaud. It is one of those in which civilisation is most 
advanced, and education most diffused. Crimes are there few, or 
unknown 4 . " 

III. Catholic Lucerne, and Protestant Berne. — Our quotations 
will be so explicit here that we shall deem it our duty to abstain 
from adding any reflection whatever. If our extracts are shorter 

1. Tableau de la Suisse, par Zurlauben, YOl. II, p. 3, — 2. Idem, p. 1-49. — 3. Idem, p. 220. — 

4. Matte-Bran, vol. vn, p. 166. 



150 



upon Lucerne than upon Berne, it is because all the writers are 
infinitely more copious upon this last Canton; a sign of its relative 
importance,, which we have thought it right to preserve : 

" The town of Lucerne is not peopled in proportion to its extent ; 
it will be, without doubt, if commerce becomes more flourishing, 
and the inhabitants profit by their advantageous situation. Lu- • 
cerne was formerly much more populous, and even very commer- 
cial l . " 

:e Lucerne, being the first in rank and in power among the Ca- 
tholic Cantons, is the place of residence of the Nuncio of the Pope ; 
all the affairs which have to do with religion are transacted in the 
annual Diet which meets in that town, and at which the deputies 
of these Cantons are present. The city contains scarcely 3,000 in- 
habitants. It has not any manufactures of importance, and its com- 
merce is very weak. As to education, it nowhere receives less encou- 
ragement than here, and consequently it is nowhere less cultivated. 
What a contrast between it and Zurich 2 ! " 

" The Canton of Lucerne, almost in the centre of Switzerland, is 
one of the most fertile of them; it produces more corn than it con- 
sumes ; most of the inhabitants are engaged in agriculture, and 
manufacturing industry is very little developed 3 . " 

C£ The soil of the Canton is very favourable to agriculture... 
Industry and commerce have not in general any great importance, 
although the neighbourhood of the lake and the road from Saint - 
Gothard are favourable to land and water carriage \ " 

£( No one can imagine how many difficulties are opposed in the 
Canton of Lucerne to the completion of the great roads; the 
peasants, imbued with ancient and ridiculous prejudices, believe 
that by enlarging the roads we open the country to the enemy 5 . '* 

To Lucerne, the first Catholic town of Switzerland, we oppose 
Berne, the first Protestant town. The one receives the Nuncio of 
the Pope, the other receives consuls ; a difference which is already 
an omen. Let us hear our authors : 

" In entering Berne, I was extremely struck with its beauty and 
cleanliness ; except Bath, I do not remember to have ever seen a 
town which has given me so much pleasure. The principal streets 
are broad and long ; they form gentle curves ; and the houses, 
which are nearly uniform, are of grey stones, and built in arcades. 
In the midst of the streets flows in stone channels a limpid stream, 
which, along with agreeably ornamented fountains, supplies the 

■ 1. Zurlauben, vol. n, p. 290. — 2. Coxe, vol. i, p. 264. — 3. Malte-Bran, vol. vii, p. 146. 
— 4. Sommerlatt, p. 220.— 5. Zurlauben, vol. i, towards the end. 



m 

wants of the inhabitants 1 . Easy circumstances and even wealth 
distinguish in a particular manner the peasants of the Canton of 
Berne ; and a particular attachment to the government is observable 
in the German district 2 . The charitable institutions of Berne are 
numerous, and administered with much wisdom. The hospitals 
are vast, clean, and well-aired 3 . 

c ' The environs of Berne are pretty, not merely from the variety 
and the hills and vales of the scenery, but from the charming habi- 
tations in which the Bernese live during the summer. We are 
received in them with a simple and frank hospitality, a grand and 
noble ease, but without pomp or luxury; things which they consider 
(and this shews their good sense) as essentially destructive of the 
real wellbeing of families, and as conducing to a relaxation of 
morals mortally dangerous to society \ " 

" When observing the fertility of the Berne country, its excel- 
lent cultivation so striking when compared to that of other Can- 
tons; when admiring the cleanliness, order, and comfort of its 
inhabitants, the industry and the wealth of Berne, we are strongly 
tempted to believe that the government of this Canton is one of the 
wisest and most paternal of all those which it has been given to 
the poor human species to create in a lucid interval of reason s ." 

" M. Coxe justly makes a great eulogium upon the politeness of 
the Bernese towards strangers ; he celebrates the singular frank- 
ness and cordiality, which he has so often admired in the Swiss. 
The Bernese are infinitely honest; the mobility of thought gives a 
distinguished superiority to their character 6 . " 

" In the plain of the Canton of Berne lives a people well known 
for their beauty, their easy circumstances, and their wealth, which 
is superior to that of all their neighbours T . " 

" Berne holds one of the first ranks among the most beautiful 
cities of Europe, and perhaps there is no town which can present 
like it a street of nearly half a league in length, bordered on both 
sides by magnificent and contiguous hotels, ornamented at certain 
distances with columns, with painted or gilded statues, and washed 
by a current of flowing water, which maintains cleanliness and 
freshness. Criminal justice is administered with the rarest equity 
and humanity, but there is generally nothing to do. Happy country 
which nourishes few criminals ! a proof both of the goodness of the 
government and of the morals 8 , " 

1 Coxe, vol. II, p. 222. — 2. Idem, pp. 228, 227. — 3. Idem, p. 227. — k. AragOll, p. 225. — 
5. idem, p. 232. — 6. Zurlaiiben, p. 164, — 7. Roueeraont, p. 313. — 8. Lautier, \ol. in. 
pp. 220, 221. 



152 



" The Canton is fertile, populous, smiling, and embellished with 
a number of wealthy cities, burghs, and villages. The gentle and 
easy manners of the Bernese render their society very agreeable. 
They are opulent without pomp, great without pride; trained to 
business from their youth, they are engaged in it almost all their 
lives. At Berne the fathers are the first teachers of their children, 
and the first lessons inculcated are the love of country and the 
advantages of moderation, equity, and sobriety. The city, although 
of moderate extent, is one ot the most beautiful in Switzerland. 
It has an Academy of Sciences, made illustrious by several learned 
men, a redoubtable arsenal, and many rich and well-administered 
hospitals i . " 

(i We admired the cultivation and the air of comfort and cleanli- 
ness in the neighbourhood of Berne. This city is, beyond contradic- 
tion, the most beautiful and best kept in Switzerland. Everything 
seen around Berne announces order and peace, well-regulated 
wealth, which is enjoyed without ostentation; nothing degraded 
or neglected is presented to the eye of the traveller. Fertility and 
happiness appear to reign in the country 2 . " 

" Nothing has been spared for the elevation of the lower classes. 
Different learned societies and libraries attest the taste for intel- 
lectual culture and the sciences 3 ." 

"The finances are in a flourishing condition. The State of Berne 
has always made many sacrifices to make and maintain roads, and 
this zeal increases every day '\ " 

" There does not perhaps exist in the world a country which, by 
a combination of a fertile soil, an excellent cultivation, and an en- 
lightened administration, can in the same degree satisfy at once the 
eye and the heart. A multitude of rustic habitations, disseminated 
alone the road from Berne to Thun, shine with a cleanliness so 
recherchee in their uniform structure that there reigns even outside 
such a grand air of plenty and such a perfect image of order, that 
the exterior alone of these houses attests the opulence of those 
who inhabit them. The citizen who sits in the counsel of the 
Republic, and the peasant who cultivates the soil, occupy similar 
residences ; a visible and touching sign of the republican equality 
which is found here in the general welfare. 

"If the sight of their homes impresses the traveller thus favour- 
ably, it is but justice to ascribe the wealth and industry of the 
people of Berne to their institutions. A country so well cul- 

1. Lanticr, vol. m, p. 308. — 2. Cambry, vol. u. p. 370. — 3. Sommerlatt, p. 161. — 4. Hem, 

p. 170. 



153 



tivated, such general prosperity, the air of content and dignity 
which is here the universal expression, are proofs of good govern- 
ment, which might render any further examination unnecessary, 
and we need not hesitate to pronounce the government of Berne 
one of the best in Europe, judging of it merely from the external 
evidence which we have adduced 1 . " 

IV. Schwitz Catholic, and Appenzell, Protestant. — We might 
have spared ourselves this comparison by contrasting the two distinct 
parties of the Canton of Appenzell ; but, as we shall have to retrace 
our steps in a subsequent chapter, we shall pursue our previous 
method. With reference to Schwitz, we can only speak of its re- 
ligion and its agriculture, the only subjects that occupy the people. 

' c Agriculture is very much neglected ; here and there are valleys 
where the plough and the Hail are unknown ; the inhabitants con- 
sume but little corn, and live chiefly on the various products of 
their flocks. Some have imagined that the fogs and mists that 
hang about the hills prevent the ripening of the corn, but the real 
cause of scarcity is neglect of cultivation 2 . " " If their prejudices 
could be overcome, there is no doubt that agriculture would be 
more advantageous than the usual occupations of the people 3 . " 
He who neglects his field, is little likely to adorn his house : " The 
furniture consists generally of a few wretched articles made of 
wood, and of the most indispensable kind 4 . " Is it study that 
takes the place of manual labour ? "A library founded for the use 
of schoolmasters was never resorted to s . " 

" What a contrast offered itself when we entered the Canton 
Zurich after having traversed an angle of Schwitz ! The latter 
covered with misery and squalor; as everywhere in Switzerland 
Romanism announces itself by rags, sores, and beggary, and Pro- 
testantism by opulence and fertility 6 . " 

" A hundred thousand ignorant pilgrims visit yearly the abbey 
of Einsidlen, and deposit their offerings with covetous Benedictins. 
Superstition and darkness accompany them; they kneel, beat 
their breasts, chant mournful hymns, wash their hands and their 
eyes in miraculous springs, see hell and its flames, boiling cal- 
drons, horrible toads and serpents ; while hungry bears haunt and 
stupify their feeble minds 7 . " " From early dawn till nightfall, 
men, women, and children throng around the feet of the saint in 
a locality about 20 feet long by 10 or 12 broad. Moved by our 
liberality, a strong Benedictin conducted us to the altar, and found 

1. Raoul, vol, f, p. 116. — 2. Pieot, p. 247. — 3. Sommerfalf, p. 265. — 4. Idem, p. 264. — 
5. Idem, p, 274. — 6. Gambry, p. 330. — 7. Idem, p. 338. 



f 



154 

a passage by distributing cuffs and kicks among the free and hardy 
Swiss who blocked up the way, and who fled at his approach. We 
visited the Goddess; the monk raised her petticoat, her veil, her 
trimmings, her gauzes, and even her scapularies: in fact, he treated 
her very lightly h " 

"During the celebration of mass, I saw a stalwart Benedictin play 
the policeman somewhat fiercely; the goods brought for sale had 
been exposed too early ; he entered every stall, took from one a 
dozen of handkerchiefs, from another a couple of hats, here a piece 
of cloth, a cheese, or some lace, with which he loaded a stoat fol- 
lower, for the good of the convent and the glory of God ! No one 
complained ; every sufferer conducted the thief with the utmost 
respect to the door, hat in hand, making lowliest obeisance, and 
promising to be more discreet and less covetous in future 2 . " 

" The natives of Einsidlen, although accustomed to the arrival 
of so many pilgrims to their abbey which is in Schwitz, have 
neglected labour, and betaken themselves to beggary and idleness ; 
thus we find them a prey to misery, ignorance, and superstition. 
They are in general bigoted and fanatical, much addicted to pil- 
grimages and processions, regard the externals of worship as the 
whole of religion, and can neither read nor write. The clergy 
whose duty it is to instruct them are responsible for this state of 
brutal ignorance 3 . " 

We might be tempted to infer from this extract that M. Cambry 
was not a very zealous Catholic, and that he might even be suspected 
of exaggeration. Count Walsh will guarantee the fidelity of the 
picture : 

"■ There is one old woman who has performed the pilgrimage 
some twenty or thirty times for the benefit of others. The time 
spent thus is a total loss to the family; work and duty are. 
suspended, and they are living on the product of their wretched eco- 
nomy. Moreover, it is difficult to persuade oneself that the same 
fervour would not have obtained the same favour if they had staid at 
home, instead of coming to ask it fifty leagues away. The oppor- 
tunities of dissipation and amusement must offer to many the com- 
pensation of this increased devotion \ " 

The cross of saint Magnus exhibited in the church of Schwitz is 
held in great veneration, and is regarded as of peculiar virtue in 
averting calamities. Not long since it was employed vith success, 
we are told, in driving away the beetles and caterpillars that in^ 



1. Cambry, vol. 2, p. 338. — 2. Mem, p. 343. — 3. Mem, p. 347. — k. Walsh, p. 132, 



155 



fested the country. It was carried in procession by the clergy, 
followed by immense crowds of people, who probably helped on the 
miracle by crushing heaps of the insects as they went. These 
good people are passionately fond of sights, and the Jesuits who 
have the charge of the College here are ready to indulge them. 
They have had theatricals, in which they and their pupils were the 
actors. The clergy in general countenanced the performances, 
and even lent the sacred vestments to enhance the show l . " 

" Public instruction is very backward in Canton Schwitz, and 
agriculture is not in advance of it. The little corn that is con- 
sumed is brought from Germany. You scarcely ever see a cultivat- 
ed field, and thirty or forty years ago the use of the plough and 
the flail was unknown. Wheat was at that period cultivated in 
gardens as an object of curiosity, and bread is still regarded as a 
luxury in most places. 

" When at the season of the great famine that followed the Re- 
volution the benevolent committees distributed lentiles, the people 
of Schwitz refused to eat this vegetable, doubtless because they 
were previously unacquainted with it. The soil would bear wheat 
cultivation here, as well as in other parts of Switzerland; but the 
fear of unproductive harvests, the force of habit, and the fetters of 
idleness, have hitherto rejected every proposal for improvement 2 ." 

Let us refresh ourselves with the other side of the picture. Let 
us step over to Appenzeil, and that we may be sure of an impartial 
statement let us follow M. Raoul Rochette, a zealous Catholic, in our 
review of this Protestant Canton : u I reached Gais, a village of 
Protestant Appenzeil, just as the people were leaving the church, 
and returning to their solitary dwellings in the plain. If the uni- 
formity of costume bear witness to the equality of political rights, 
the exceeding cleanliness of their persons and attire are evidence 
of their wealth, while the dignity of their bearing attests the ele- 
vation of their character and position. You cannot conceive a 
more interesting spectacle than that offered by this people of Ap- 
penzeil, so calm in a state of the most absolute freedom. It is 
scarcely possible to describe their condition without exposing 
oneself to the reproach of exaggeration. The exterior of the houses 
at Gais, where I was living, is so carefully preserved, that I would 
defy any artist to exaggerate the details of this rustic architecture. 
Nowhere have I seen the expression of such an exquisite senti- 
ment of cleanliness as in Appenzeil, from the threshold which is 

1. Walsh, p. 158. =- 2, Mem, p. 137. 



cleaned every day. to the polished lightning conductor that sur- 
mounts every roof in the village, It is impossible to unite a more 
exquisite taste with a more perfect simplicity ; and if the embel- 
lishment of home be criterion of the love for home, the inhabitant 
of Appenzell is undoubtedly the happiest man on earth, as he is 
perhaps also the most free. " 

But is it indeed the Protestant district of Appenzell that is here 
referred to? we shall see: "The town of Appenzell is infinitely 
lev- attractive than the smallest village of the reformed districts. 
The religious festivals, which are very numerous, fall in with the 
natural character : the pomp displayed on these occasions is just a 
dissipation and a spectacle : but,, besides this, any act of religion, a 
marriage , a baptism for instance, is constantly followed by dancing, 
and a ball is here, so to speak, a part of the sacrament l . " 

"Trogen, one of the principal towns of Protestant Appenzell; is a 
pattern of wealth and industry. The houses of the wealthier citizens 
are ornamented within with the finest marbles ; and even in France 
there are few persons whose dwellings are decorated in a purer 
taste than that of the venerable landamman Zellweger. Thus, 
what were formerly the huts of the shepherd serfs of the abbot of 
Saint-Gall, are become the palaces of a free people ; anda country that 
derives ail its wealth from its pastures, imports the arts and the 
luxury of Italy. It is but justice to observe, that never was liberty 
more gratefully cherished by those whom she has so largely blessed 2 .'*' 

■•'Throughout Protestant Appenzell. I never saw one dilapidated 
house or one ruined cottage. The whole district seems in holiday 
costume : the houses are spacious and well placed, and have the 
lower story built of stone, the upper part of wood ; they are scatter- 
ed about on hills, in vailies on the mountain-sides, so that wherever 
you turn your eyes, you see. as in the centre of an English park, 
a large aud commodious dwelling-house, white and well kept; with 
French windows opening en to a richly cultivated garden. Before 
reading what follows, let us remember that it is in the Protestant 
part of the Canton that the manufactures are carried on. The 
flourishing condition of the cotton manufactories in the Protestant 
district has placed many persons in easy circumstances, and has 
rendered some rich. This is evident in the villages of Erogen and 
Undevil, from the regularity of the buildings, and their extreme 
cleauliness 3 . " 

In our journey across the outer portion of the Canton of Appen- 

1. Raoul Rocliette, vol. u, pp. 216 lo 221. — 2. Baehon, p. 172. — 3. Goxe, vol. i, p. 33. 



lo7 

zell, which is Protestant, we entered several houses, and everywhere 
found a remarkable degree of order and cleanliness, such as to make 
it, plain that these are become necessary to the people. The result 
is a series of the most agreeable landscapes, along a chain of culti- 
vated mountains, richly wooded and covered with hamlets, which 
seem to have been placed there by the hand of taste to produce a 
picturesque effect. One might think they were independent tribes 
united only by the love of society ; but they are so still more by the 
maintenance or enactment of laws and government, and for the 
preservation of the common liberties l . " 

V. Unterwalden Catholic, and Glaris Protestant. — Although 
these Cantons have no positive importance, they have a bearing on 
our general conclusions, always the same. If we were to suppress 
them, it might be thought that the result of our comparisons was 
for the first time different. 

" The Canton of Unterwalden is generally poor, " says Depping. 
" There are few large fortunes, and there is much indigence. A 
Swiss author attributes both facts to the excessive devotion of the 
people. The numerous services and festivals consume much 
precious time, aud poverty leads to beggary. Buried in profound 
and brutal ignorance, the peasants have opposed all improvements. 
Dark and gloomy, they upheld the practices of bribery and corrup- 
tion , and set themselves against the introduction of knowledge as 
an innovation 2 . " 

" The people do not take advantage, as they might, of the natural 
productions of their country, but purchase at a high price the 
manufactured articles which they might make for themselves, as 
they have the materials at hand. We may indeed apply to 
Unterwalden what is the general remark of all travellers and 
writers on Switzerland, of the superior industry that characterises 
the Protestant Cantons, the result of want of education among the 
Catholics, and of the time wasted in festivals and superstitious 
exercises. The cantonal schools are neglected, which may be traced 
back to divers causes, and especially to the poverty of the State, and 
of individuals 3 . " 

"The existence of the people of Schwitz, Uri, and Unterwalden, 
is a miserable one, and they make few efforts to render it otherwise. 
They might certainly keep their houses cleaner; they might adopt 
a mode of clothing themselves more in keeping with the exigences 
of the climate; they might improve their diet and their beds. But 



1. Coxe, pp. 34 and 35. — 2. Depping, vol. nr, p. H3. — 3. Ticot, p. 270. 



158 



no ! the thought never occurs to them ! they live in cahins that are 
black with the smoke of their fathers' fires, and shiver through the 
snows of winter in garments that oppressed them in summer. 
Rye bread, softened in whey, is their chief article of food. March- 
beans, potatoes, cabbages eaten with salt, pies prepared and cooked 
in grease, and in the case of the rich, the addition of a little lard ; 
such is their bill of fare l . Neither trade nor manufactures prosper 
in this Canton 2 . " 

Let us turn the medal to the Protestant side, and see what the 
same author says of Glaris : "Trade and manufactures nourish. " 

"The people of Glaris are remarkably industrious. In the 
seventeenth century they had begun to establish manufactories 
among them ; they then worked for the merchants of Zurich, but 
they soon learned to do without them, and to work for themselves, 
and their manufactures of cottons and of muslins have long made 
them opulent and independent V 

"The number of Protestants has increased considerably within the 
last century, and their ability in every branch of trade greatly 
exceeds that of the Catholics, which is a clear proof that the dogmas 
of Home are less favourable to liberty and to the progress of the 
useful arts \ " 

This last extract may lead the reader to suppose that Glaris is 
not exclusively Protestant. " About one-eighth is Catholic, " says 
M. Oscar McCarthy, "and a glance is suflicient to show the 
difference between them and the rest of the population, who are 
addicted to commerce and manufactures, whence they have attain- 
ed riches and competence 5 . " 

VI. Soleure Catholic, and Neufchatel Protestant. — It is 
possible that to those who know nothing more of Switzerland than 
the relative importance of the Cantons, our comparisons may 
appear to have been purposely made between districts differing 
widely in size. But we would observe that we have not been left 
to choose; after having disposed of the four mixed Cantons, there 
remained nine Catholic- and nine Protestant Cantons. If the latter 
be the more important, that is not our fault. This is often the re- 
sult of the truth that we are asserting. If for instance we hear far 
more of Neufchatel than of Soleure, it is not that the population 
or the extent of the former Canton is greater; on the contrary, but 
that the industry and instruction of Neufchatel have made it known 
far and wide, while Soleure remains in obscurity. We may also 

1» D'Haussez, vol. i, p. 149. — 2. Somraerlatt. p. 282. — 3. Picot, p. 286. — 4. Coxe, vol. I, 
p k 49. — 5. Dictionnaire de la Conversation, GLARIS. 



159 



remark that the civilisation of Nenfchatel is in nowise the result 
of superior natural advantages; for perhaps there is no part of 
Switzerland where the people have had more obstacles to contend 
with. " Soleure, then, " says Depping, " where the Catholic religion 
is in the ascendant,, is greatly behind the other Cantons ; the people 
are ignorant and superstitious, and the schools are bad. A talented 
Swiss writer, M. Glutz-Blozheim, attributes this to the Jesuits; for 
although the superintendence of education is no longer in their 
hands, the spirit of their method prevails, and the government 
is so little alive to the necessity of any improvement that it has 
proposed the recall of the Jesuits. Aristocratic influence has been 
prejudicial to the state, as the influence of the clergy has been to 
the progress of knowledge 1 . " " Soleure is more interesting from 
its trade, than from the state of education there. The schools of 
the town are even worse than those of the country 2 . " Are we 
to infer from this that the commerce of Soleure is flourishing? 
Coxe shall answer : (< The commerce of Soleure is very inconsi- 
derable, although from the situation of the place it might be exten- 
sive 3 . " To this M. Sommerlatt in a more recent publication adds : 
" The manufactures are almost entirely confined to the products 
of the soil 4 /' And as if to indicate the source of this apathy he says 
elsewhere : "The inhabitants are apt to be influenced by su- 
perstition 5 . " While it is difficult to ^collect any characteristic de- 
tails with regard to Soleure, it is scarcely possible to bring those 
referring to Neufchatei within the limits of a brief comparison. 

In surveying the general aspect of the country, M. Cambry ex- 
claims : " What a marvellous state of cultivation ! Twenty-four 
villages are within sight ! Pasture lands, corn-fields, pine-woods, 
scattered groups of firs, announce to the traveller the opulence and 
the happiness of the peasantry 6 ; agriculture is here in great per- 
fection 7 . " Nor does education lag behind : " The rudiments of 
knowledge are generally accessible to all classes, and are well 
taught 8 . " Neufchatei has good schools for the youth of both sexes; 
libraries, printing-houses, and museums 9 . " To which Coxe adds: 
" The people are well-informed, and for the most part devote all 
their leisure to reading. Their tastes are divided between labour 
and study, and I was surprised to find, even in the villages, excel- 
lent and well-chosen libraries 10 ." 

And now let us glance at Malte-Brun's more detailed account : 

1. Bepping, vol. tl, pp. 7 to 10. — 2. Malte-Brun, vol. vn, p. 138. — 3. Coxe, 1. 1, p. 124. 
k. idem, p. 325. — 5. Sommerlatt, p. 323. — 6. Cambry, p. 235. — 7. Sommerlatt, p. 551. — 
8 ; Picot, p. 536* — 9, Idem, p. 561. — 10. Coxe, vol. II, p. 122. 



160 



" We might have expected that a district whicli from its elevation 
is exposed to all the rigours of a northern climate, would have 
paralysed the energies of its inhabitants. Far from it, and indeed 
it would be difficult to find a country more interesting from the in- 
dustry, the information, and opulence of its people. The arts of 
painting and engraving, and especially of watchmaking, are culti- 
vated in those mountains with great success. At Locle, a town 
situated at a great elevation, the population is almost entirely em- 
ployed in working on gold, silver, and steel, for the cutler and the 
watchmaker. 

"At Ghaux-de-fonds, formerly a village, now a town of some 
magnitude, and situated at a greater elevation than Locle, there is 
a large manufactory of watches and other minute objects of art, as 
well as of lace. This town was the birthplace of the Droz, skilful 
mechanics, celebrated for their automatons. At Convert, Travel's, 
and other places we find the same industry and activity. We can 
scarcely conceive the limits of man's inventive powers when these 
are free to develope themselves; and here we see this realised. 
Peasants, moved solely by the desire of improving their condition, 
have brought from the bowels of the earth a force which multi- 
plies their natural strength, so as to increase its productive pover. 
We shall not then find it matter of surprise that in the indus- 
trious Canton of Neufchatel there should be 5,000 lace-makers, 
3,300 watchmakers, a large body of engravers, and 700 artists oc- 
cupied solely in designing patterns for the manufactures of muslins 
and cottons. The annual production of the last is estimated 
at 60,000 pieces, and the number of watches exported to Germany, 
Italy, Spain, Turkey, and even America, at 130,000. In a country 
enclosed by mountains like Neufchatel, the condition is not to be 
estimated by the number of cities : 3 of these, 3 municipal towns, 
67 villages, and 45 hamlets, including a population of 1,350 to 
the square league, afford the most striking evidence of prosperity. 
And to what is this prosperity to be attributed ? Shall we ascribe 
it to that tendency to reflect, to examine, to discuss all sorts of 
questions, which led them in 1530 to adopt, by a plurality of 
votes, the Reformation as preached to them by Farel? for there 
are only two Romish parishes in Neufchatel : Landeron and Crel- 
lier. Is it rather to be attributed to the perfect freedom both 
civil and religious that the people enjoy? to the exemption from 
taxes and burdens? to a state of peace unbroken for centuries? 
Doubtless all these things have had a share in exciting that spirit 
of emulation which tends to preserve purity of morals and the 



l(ri 



love of labour; that passionate craving for liberty which is as a 
spur to the acquisition of knowledge, and that spirit of fellowship 
among those engaged in the same works, which annihilates the 
petty strivings of rivalry so often observed in manufacturers *. " 

And what has Nature done for the development of this prospe- 
rity? Niggard of her gifts, hers has been a forced co-operation. 
" The stratification of the Jura being loose and hollow, the rains 
and snows penetrate the crevices, and form subterraneous channels ; 
these the peasants have made use of to turn water-mills, which, 
after an infinity of labour bestowed on their construction, serve to 
facilitate the cultivation of the soil. Engineers have found means 
of setting wheels, where this seemed impossible; they have de- 
vised a new species of scaffolding, and a multitude of other expe- 
dients, and that not for the sake of amassing fortunes to gratify a 
covetous ambition, but to secure the quiet enjoyment of a com- 
petence legitimately acquired. 

"Their houses, which are small, well-built, and very convenient, 
are ail plastered and whitewashed on the outside; they are clean 
and even elegant, which here in this mountainous region might 
appear astonishing 2 . " " A beggar is scarcely to be met with, for 
labour keeps off poverty V We rejoice when, along with all this 
prosperity, we find a state of morals which proves that it is not 
abused : " The morals of the inhabitants of this happy country, " 
says Coxe, " are so excellent, and theircharacter is so mild, that 
flagitious crimes are scarcely known among them; indeed, it is rare 
to meet with the smallest instance of the infraction of the law 4 /' 

i£ It must be remarked that in the municipality of Sainte-Gote, 
in the Canton of Neufchatel, the moral and physical qualities of 
the people are admirably balanced; and if they are exhausted by 
the cultivation of the soil, they are refreshed by the enjoyment of 
freedom. The cleanliness is very striking. In the four villages 
that compose the district the houses are well and regularly built, 
the public places and fountains are carefully kept, and the streets 
are better paved than in many larger towns. And, with all this, 
one is pleased to find that abundance and benevolence go hand- 
in-hand, and that everywhere the spirit of kindness manifests 
itself, either in the charity that alleviates or in the hospitality that 
prevents 5 . " 

Now what we have to ask is, whether all this is to be traced to 
a period so remote as to afford evidence of its being the fruit of a 



1. Malte-Brun, vol. vii, p. 161. — 2. Coxe, vol. n, pp. 121, 122. — 3. idem, pp. 122, 123. 
— 4. idem, p. 134. — 5. Zurlauben. vol. n, p. 543. 

11 



Catliolic-tree ; or whether it he of so recent a date as to prove 
itself the result of the great Reformation of the sixteenth century ? 

It is scarcely half a century. " says Durand^ fc - since the forests 
and deserts of this fertile country have been converted into 
rich pasture-lands and populous villages, that obliterate all 
trace of the sterility of the soil. Since this, industry and energy 
have done wonders. On all sides the traveller sees miracles of 
industry l ." 

And now let 1JS v erify these testimonies from the pages of M. Raoui 
Rochette, whom we are pleased to cite with reference to a Protest- 
ant Canton, from the fact of being of the Romish religion : 

•■' Cultivation of mind is so common in this happy Canton of 
^euichatel, that it is matter of surprise to none but strangers. It is 
the result of that widely-diffused competence which hows from the 
deyelppinenj pf all the resources of the soil, and of the human 
energies, to an extent unknown perhaps elsewhere 2 . " 

c: The government of Neufchatel is one of the mildest and most 
paginal in Switzerland. I never heard any complaint whatever 
of the magistracy from any one of the people whom I have ques- 
tioned. I found nothing Liii contentment with their lot 3 . " 

" I cannot quit Xeiifchatei without bearing testimony to the ex- 
cellent character of its inhabitants. The people are indeed citizens 
and brothers; I found no poor among them; the government is so 
mild that it leaves to the cultivator ail the fruits of his toil. Public 
charity is neither showy nor interested, as with us. and is always 
ready to come to the aid of honourable indigence. The peasantry 
bear in their faces the stamp of happiness and the marks of health : 
they never meet without a friendly greeting, even where they 
have no previous acquaintance, and this appears to me one of the 
strongest proofs of the kindly feeling by which all are alike ani- 
mated. They are generally a talented people 4 . " 

Now. to what cause does M. Raoul Rochette himself ascribe this 
prosperity, mis diffusion of knowledge, this exemplary morality: 
The following words, which we copy 1'roin his pages, may mm 
an answer : - The faith is as fresh as op the day when the Gospel 
was first brought by the preacher to these values s . '' 

YII. Urn Catholic, and Basle Protestant. — The Canton Uri is too 
small to be spoken of much at length ; still we will give the 
impressions of thos,e who have written about it : Many of the 
inhabitants of Canton Urn left by the clergy, as the purveyors of 



1. Durand, vol. iv. pp. 79 to 81. — 2. Ragpl Rochette. vol. [, p. 3. — 3. idem, p. 29. — 

4. Idem, pp. 38. 39. — 5. Idem, vol. m ? p. 3$. 



163 



education, in a state of shameful ignorance, subsist by begging on 
the high roads, while the better part of the population devote 
themselves to commerce. The influence of the clergy is slightly 
diminished; there are fewer pilgrimages and processions, and the 
people work more. Nevertheless, this Canton, which is entirely 
Catholic, has much progress to make. A certain French traveller 
has said that Uri does not enjoy the liberty of the press. I go 
further; I believe that there is no press, and the state of public 
education is such that few citizens would be found capable of 
administering the affairs of the State, if they were not prepared 
for the office by commerce and by military service l . " 

H Uri is, of the three primary Cantons, the largest, the least 
populous, and the most uncivilised 2 . " 

(e These Cantons have never produced any poets or authors of 
distinction 3 ," " and there is not a single manufactory in either of 
the three Cantons of Uri, Schwitz, and Unterwalden 4 . n 

\% About two o'clock we reached Fluetten; this home of Catho- 
licism announced itself by four men with goitre, divers with 
other complaints, and half-a-dozen wretches in rags who looked as 
if they had come out of the tombs. Never did poverty, disease, 
and misery show themselves under a sadder aspect than in these 
narrow vallies and gorges that we traversed after leaving 
Altdorf. — Never did I behold human nature more degraded 
in form and organisation. I could have supposed myself trans- 
ported to the Valais, or to Tartary; I could have believed 1 was 
looking on those Huns who, by the terror they inspired, were 
regarded as monsters in Thrace, in Gaul, and in Italy 5 . " 

" The communes are, for the most part, too poor to support 
schools; and where they do exist, they are in many cases only open 
in winter. Parents who can afford it send their children away for 
education. Throughout the Canton there is neither library, nor 
literary society deserving of any attention 6 . * 

And now let us do for Basle what we have done for Uri ; let us 
consult the pages of the tourist and the geographer : 

<e Basle, like Zurich and Geneva, is remarkable for the industry 
and cultivation of its inhabitants, and for the extent of its commerce. 
It was here that the first printing press was erected in Switzerland ; 
and in point of fertility of soil and of agriculture, Basle is not a 
whit behind the other Cantons 7 . " 

1. Beppiag, vol. Hi, pp. 117 to 1-23. — 2. llougemout, p. 3M. — 3. tdem, p, 306. — 4. Zuf- 
lauben, p. 153. — 5, Ganibry, vol. I, pp. 295, 296. — 6. Idem, p. 238. — 7. SonimerlaU,' 
p. 344. 



164 



" The agriculturist and the manufacturer are alike distinguished 
for their activity and their industry " 

" There is no village without good primary schools 2 ." 

" The natives of Basle-Gampagne are remarkable for their 
natural vivacity and wit 3 ." 

" In all ages the city of Basle has regarded public instruction as the 
only base of civilisation, and science as the noblest ornament of 
their town and of its inhabitants, so that Troxler could say : " Basle 
has set Switzerland the example of noble sentiments and heroic 
efforts \" 

" Basle has thirteen literary and scientific societies \ " 

"The children of citizens receive in general an excellent educa- 
tion. They are always taught Latin, sometimes Greek, and it is 
by no means unusual to find petty shopkeepers reading Horace, 
Virgil, or Plutarch at their leisure moments 6 . " 

"The arts and sciences have been cultivated at Basle with great 
success. The Canton is well farmed, and the factories are numerous. 
Basle is the first city in Switzerland with regard to commerce 7 ." 
It is also the richest ; there are AO houses having a business of more 
than a million of francs V " The trade is daily increasing, and has 
increased wonderfully within the last four-and-twenty years 9 . " 

VIII. Zug Catholic, and Schaffhausen Protestant. — Before we 
say anything of the inhabitants, let us say a word about the soil 
of Canton Zug. — " The soil is generally productive, and the 
climate healthy and mild, " writes M. Sommerlatt 10 . — And what 
is the result of these advantages ? " There is little trade, and little 
industry," replies the same author. 

" The peasants of Zug and Uri have the reputation of being the 
least civilised and the most intractable of the whole league. The 
former are distinguished for a turbulent spiri t, of which their 
public assemblies have given sanguinary proof 11 ." 

The portrait is not flattering, but we would acknowledge that 
this, the smallest of the Catholic Cantons, has appeared to us the 
best. Now let us compare Schaffhausen : " The inhabitants of this 
Canton have more points of resemblance with their Suabian 
neighbours than with their Swiss countrymen. The artisans of the 
towns are industrious, and live well; the peasants are sober, active, 
and laborious, and exhibit none of the marks of poverty. Their 
language is less corrupt than that of the German Swiss in general. 

1. Sommerlatt, p. 346. — 2. Idem, p. 348. — 3. Idem, p. 346. — 4. Idem, p. 348. — 5. Idem, 
p. 358. — 6. Coxe. vol. i, p. 179. — 7. idem, p. 319. — 8. Sommerlatt, p. 344. — 9. Coxe, 
vol. i, p. 144.— 10. Sommerlatt, p. 306. — 11. Zurlauben, vol. u, p. 175. 



165 



There are primary schools in all the communes of the Canton, and 
the masters, though ill-paid, discharge their duties with zeal l . " 

"The fmauces are well administered, and there is a balance in 
favour of the State 2 ". 

" There are several literary and benevolent institutions 3 . " 

We are approaching the end of our task; our last comparison will 
not perhaps be the least conclusive. 

IX. The Valais Catholic, and Geneva Protestant. — "The inhabit- 
ants of the Valais are behind the other Cantons, even in regard to 
agricultural operations, and the management of cattle. They are 
also inferior in education, knowledge, and science. The people of 
the Lower Valais are specially idle, negligent, and dirty 4 . " 

"This region, surrounded by high mountains, has an isolated po- 
pulation exercising little influence on its neighbours; uncivilised, 
slothful, poor, and ignorant 3 ." 

' £ The population inhabiting the miserable villages of the Valais 
is in perfect keeping with the smoky hovels they reside in. Rags, 
dirt, and goitre, that hideous deformity of which the VaJais is the 
classic ground, cause one to avert the eyes in disgust . The costume 
of the women is like that of the people of the towns, except in its 
filthiness, which is nowhere equalled. 

" The property of the communes is managed with a degree of 
recklessness beyond what is elsewhere to be met with. There is 
no restraint of law; every one uses or abuses it according to his « 
necessities or his caprice. The pastures are overstocked ; the forest- 
trees are cut down at pleasure, without any reference to the autho- 
rities. As the Valaisans made no efforts to free themselves from 
their present condition of obscurity, ignorance, and wretchedness, 
it might be supposed that all, even the upper classes, are well pleas- 
ed with it. There is little industry among them, and their im- 
provement would seem hopeless when we consider how little change 
has been effected by the opening of the great road which brings the 
travellers and the merchandise of France and Italyto their doors 6 . " 

" Ficture to yourself immense tracts of valuable land lying 
waste ; acres of undrained marshes ; woods browsed by cattle, and 
devastated by man; and alongside of all the roads, here and there, 
a woman employed in keeping either a few goats, a cow, or a pig, 
and a cretin holding out his hand for the alms wrung from the 
disgust, rather than the compassion, of the traveller; picture to 
yourself, I say, all this, and you have some idea of the state of things 

1 Picot, pp. 347, 350. — 2. Sommerlatt, p. 369. — 3. idem, p. 372. — 4. Rongemont 
pp. 333, 334. — 5. Idem, p. 294. — 6. D'Haussez, vol. I, pp. 229 to 233. 



Ibb' 

that saddens the heart as you journey through the Valais, which 
under a better administration might he rendered so productive and 
so picturesque 1 . " 

" The inhabitants have refused to employ themselves as manu- 
facturers. Mining, iron-foundries, and the making of glass are 
operations carried on exclusively by foreigners, and Valaisans, sunk 
in the most abject poverty, will yet refuse to take work in them. 

(( Their wretchedness is not only the result of an inadequate pro- 
vision, it is also the consequence of bad habits received from their 
ancestors, and which will be in turn transmitted to their children. 
The people have all the vices that are born of idleness — intempe - 
rance, disorder, and the most revolting filthiness. The small profit 
realised by the sale of any superfluous produce is spent without 
thought, and adds no comforts to their store. The most indispen- 
sable articles of furniture are wanting in their houses, and such as 
they have soon become shabby, like their garments, from the want 
of care. Education is either bad or neglected. Some of the 
children indeed are taught to read and write after a fashion, but 
no pains are taken with their moral training, and nothing is done 
to withdraw them from the career which has brought their fathers 
to poverty. Here all are poor, all are suffering, all are ignorant. 
Better manners and a measure of pride keep some aloof from the 
populace; and the families marry only among themselves; but in 
reality the only difference is between discomfort and destitution 2 ." 

Apropos of the Valais, we wouJd suggest an inquiry as to whether 
the causes of its cretinism are not moral as well as physical. We 
will hear what M. Raoul Rochette has to say on the subject of this 
scourge, on finding it in another Catholic country, the Val d'Aosta : 
"1 shall never forget the sensations 1 experienced on beholding at 
every door of every village of the Val d'Aosta this frightful multi- 
tude of cretins, sickly, wretched, languishing, with an enormous 
head, lost in an enormous goitre, their faces swollen and livid, the 
eyes sunk under the thick and heavy lids ; the flabby cheeks, the 
half- opened lips with the tongue hanging out, and a filthy saliva 
round it ; incapable of motion except by means of a sort of machine 
in which they are enclosed, and which is impelled by the weight of 
their bodies. Some lay warming their limbs, which were scarcely 
covered by rags, in the sun ; others, seated on the laps of half-cre- 
tinised old women, resigned to them the inspection of their dirty 
heads and hideous beards; all were motionless, dejected, sitting in 



1. D'Haussez, vol. I, p. 264. — 2. idem, pp. 273 to 277. 



167 



profound silence, 01% sometimes stirred by sadden passion at the 
sight of a stranger, would seize a stone which they were impotent 
to fling, or form a curse which died away upon 1 heir voiceless lips. 
At the sight of these abject creatures, these unformed sketches of 
the human race one shudders to see how small is the interval that 
separates man from the brute. Surely the warlike Solassi, the 
indigenous race of these vallies, before whom the genius of ancient 
Rome retired defeated, could not have been cretins. Neither were 
those Pretorians inhabitants of Aosta, whose duty it was to defend 
this important barrier of the Empire. And where are now Hie 
descendants of the conquerors of Appius? as well as those of the 
Pretorians of Augustus? Who could recognise them in the 
locality, which nevertheless has neither changed its aspect nor its 
nature ; but where the spectre of the kings of Sardinia has giveii 
place to the legislation of ancient Rome. 

" It was remarked that under the French administration, which 
lasted from 1798 to 1814, the number of cretins, born such, had 
sensibly diminished, and it has recently been stated in documents, 
which have not been contradicted, that since the restoration of 
the Sardinian rule the number of these unfortunate beings has 
increased annually to a frightful extent. It was natural to conclude 
that the administrations had been conducted on different principles, 
and so it was 1 . " 

M. Lautier follows in the same track : (i The neglect of educa- 
tion is one of the causes of this imbecility (cretinism), The lower 
classes in the Valais neglect their children, who exist like the beast . 
They wallow in the mire, seizing and devouring all they find there ; 
in the winter they pass whole days stretched in a room warmed by 
a stove 2 /' C( The Valaisans are poor, indifferent to pleasure, even 
to comfort; they are paralysed by idleness. Their filthiness is 
disgusting. Drunkenness is the prevailing vice. They are very 
superstitious, and quite insensible to their own interests; moreover, 
intractable and obstinate 3 . " 

"The houses of the Valais, from which the light of day seems 
carefully excluded, and where the commonest necessaries are not 
to be found, appear to belong to another age of the world. And, 
with regard to science and education, the Valais is indeed behind 
the rest of Switzerland 4 . " 

And of all these evils what is the primary cause ? e( There are, " 
says one of our travellers, " obstacles more terrible perhaps than 

1. Raoul RoclieUe, vol. in, p. 392. — 2. LaiUier, vol. n, p. 204, — 3. — Idem, p. 231. — 
4. Picot, pp. 510 to 512. 



108 



those of nature in convulsion, which always oppose the progress of 
cultivation and industry : I mean those of natural indolence, of 
superstition, and of prejudices that time has not yet destroyed, 
which lead them to repulse all that would tend to draw them out of 
their wretched ignorance in which they prefer to grovel *. " 

But we will come down Lake Leman; and, with the Valais still 
fresh in our memory, contemplate Geneva. 

We must ohserve, in the first place, that the line of deviation and 
of development is the epoch of the Reformation : " Since the 
Reformation, Geneva is become one of the most luminous points of 
a centre of light, literature, and science 2 ." Its superiority over the 
other capital cities of Switzerland is in some respects purely intel- 
lectual ; nothing has been spared to perfect the educational institu- 
tions. The library has some 50 or 60,000 volumes, and a large 
collection of manuscripts ; its Academy, founded by Calvin, has 
chairs of theology, law, medicine, and other literary and scientific 
branches; its observatory is fitted up with good instruments; its 
botanic garden is rich in fine plants; many societies of arts and 
literature keep alive the taste for solid pleasures, and perhaps 
conspire with a rigid form of Church discipline to produce that 
purity of morals, which is more common here than elsewhere. 
One of the characteristic traits of the Genevese is their love of 
reading; more than 2,000 volumes of the public library are 
constantly in circulation among the workmen, and it is not known 
that a single volume has ever been lost 3 . " 

" Geneva is justly regarded as the Swiss Athens of France. It is 
the most populous and the most industrious city of the Cantons, and 
that in which the greatest number of newspapers are published ; 
some of these rank with the best in Europe. This scientific, ma- 
nufacturing, and mercantile city has indeed few places of public 
amusement; it is only of late years that it possesses a theatre ; it 
owes its attractiveness, which draws such an immense concourse of 
foreigners, to the admirable social order which prevails 4 . " 

" Geneva is now one of the most beautiful of European cities ; 
not only by its quays, its bridges, its hotels, its public places, but 
by its industry, its manufactures, its commerce, its civilisation, 
and its riches. The Genevese are, in general, distinguished for 
their information and their love of order. The love of their native 
country is very strong, a sort of link and fraternity unite them 
whenever they may happen to meet, and anything that recalls the 

1. Aragon, p. 74. — 2. Malte-Biun, vol. vn, p. 189. — 3. idem, p. 191. — 4. Balli, 
pp. 217, 218, 219. 



169 



fatherland operates upon them as an instantaneous and powerful 
charm K" 

" Geneva is perhaps the place where the full resources of the 
human mind are most entirely developed. We cannot, without 
astonishment, look through the catalogue of savants and of cele- 
brated artists of all kinds that this city has produced within the 
last two centuries ! . " 

" The land in the vicinity is so well cultivated, and the number 
of elegant country-houses is so great, that the whole resembles a 
garden, or a public promenade. The soil of Geneva is not na- 
turally fertile; but they are skilfully managed, and all the resources 
afforded by a great population are brought to bear on their im- 
provement. 

u The Protestant clergy have enjoyed a great reputation for 
learning, talent, wisdom, and zeal ever since the Reformation; 
their principal aim is to do good by setting an example of the 
virtues they recommend. " 

" If Geneva, in spite of its smallness, has gained a European re- 
putation, she owes it essentially to her educational etablishments 
and to the distinguished men found in them. The education of 
women is conducted with as much care as that of the other sex. 
Divers institutions aid the Government in this matter. The 
education of country children has not been overlooked, and in 
every parish there are one or more primary schools 3 ." 

£i If the Genevese, shut up in a corner and as to domain reduced 
almost to the use of their arms, and with scarcely any soil but 
their industry to cultivate if we may so speak, if they have been 
enabled not only to be self-sufficing but to put Europe under con- 
tribution by their arts and their machinery, we do indeed re- 
cognise in all this the power of the genius of man *. " 

Educational advantages here are by no means the exclusive pre- 
rogatives of the rich : " We are astonished," says Coxe, " to find 
at Geneva men perfectly well-informed among the very lowest of 
the people, and there is no town in Europe where knowledge is so 
universally diffused. I have enjoyed many a conversational treat 
on politics and literature with mechanics, and was surprised with 
the amount of their information 5 . " 

The testimony of Baron d'Haussez is no less valuable than 
that of M. Raoul Rochette. Let us listen to it : " The freedom 
that is enjoyed at Geneva, the watchfulness of an enlightened 

1. Aragon, p. 7. — 2. Durand, vol. iv, p. 72. — 3. Picot, p. 546. — 4. Raoul Rochette, 
vol. 1!, p. 361. — 5. idem, vol. Ill, pp. 271 to 274. — 6. Coxe, vol. II, p. 337. 



170 

Government, and the mild and orderly manners of all classes 
of the people, render life here as pleasant to strangers as it is to 
the inhabitants. Nowhere is society so select, nor is it easy to 
find elsewhere such an union of all that can make life tranquil 
and agreeable. 

ie In the first class of peculiarities which place Geneva very high 
in the circle of important cities; we must rank the taste and skill 
of the people for the higher branches of knowledge, and for the 
useful arts. Public and gratuitous courses of lectures are given by 
some of the most distinguished citizens, who with the most per- 
fect disinterestedness consecrate to the edification of the people the 
information and talents they possess, thus employing for the good 
of their country an activity of mind which elsewhere is but too 
frequently devoted to the excitement of political commotions. 
Hence a more widely-diffused information, and an education so 
admirably adapted to the special wants of each particular class, 
that each takes only what he requires for his special, individual 
career; and thus ambition is circumscribed in those circles which, 
without dividing, part the population. We must seek in this per- 
manent disposition the secret of the tranquillity that distinguishes 
Geneva from the generality of Republics. Previous to the Refor- 
mation, the pretensions of the house of Savoy gave rise during 
several centuries to a succession of struggles. Since that great 
movement, Geneva has only twice been disturbed by any of those 
convulsions that are so apt to be intermittent in countries where 
the same form of government prevails. Every one finds a measure 
of relative consideration, and such a portion of comfort as suffices 
for happiness ; for on looking round on the admirable state of order 
that prevails, each rejoices in it as though it were his own Work; 
and since no single name shines so as to eclipse the rest, and absorb 
the merit of the whole, every one is at liberty to believe that his 
personal influence has a bearing on the whole ; and, indeed, such 
is the fact. Moreover, the authority is wielded in a spirit of gentle- 
ness and benevolence. 

" The tranquillity of mind and the leisure which are realised at 
Geneva are consecrated to science and to public affairs. Here, without 
effort and without fatigue, without jostling his neighbour, the citizen 
has time for everything ; he contributes to the public advantage, and 
he receives his reward in the esteem of his fellow-citizens, which 
is rather felt than expressed. If there be any overplus of time or 
talent, he employs it still to the advantage of his country by filling 
the professor's chair, by taking office in some branch of the admi- 



171 



nistration, by consecrating his leisure to the creation or the su- 
perintendence of such things as may contribute to the general 
welfare. 

" The arts go hand in hand with the sciences at Geneva, and if 
we come down to these branches of industry which without becoming 
trades are on the verge of ceasing to be arts, we shall find that 
here also Geneva is in the ascendant. Nowhere else do we find 
such vast workshops, and such an amount of first-rate production 
in watchmaking and jewellery, and in all that appertains to them. 

(C There are but few enterprises of real utility in which Genevan 
capital has not a share; and such is the confidence generally felt 
in their prudence and management, that the association of Genevese 
partners is always found to attract others. 

" The result of all this is a general ease of fortune, position, and 
even of mind; for all have more money, more relative considera- 
tion, more mind than they are called on to dispense, and thus we 
find nowhere else a population which presents the appearance of so 
great a degree of comfort and prosperity. 

L( I have claimed for Geneva a superiority of mind as well as of 
fortune ; and, to justify my opinion, let any one make his way into 
the social meetings of the elite of the city, here more numerous and 
more distinguished than in most places, making allowance for the 
difference of population. The conversational talent which has been 
supposed to exist exclusively in Paris, is here found in all its 
piquancy, its wit, and its gracefulness. What diversity, what ele- 
gance, what talent in those conversations, arising from the apropos 
of the moment, and enlivened by the information and the wit of 
women devoid of pedantry and spite; where mental culture is equal 
in the sexes, and where the result is an interchange of thought 
upon all subjects, and in every variety of style. 

** it becomes a duty for the stranger to proclaim the noble and 
generous kindness with which he has been received ; the solicitude 
which bore the impress and sometimes the character of affection. 
For my own part, I could have fancied myself in the centre of a 
circle of my early friends; and all my efforts to penetrate beneath 
the surface have confirmed me in the belief that this kindness is 
no mere form, but the true expression of the feelings of the heart. 
Under the name of Sunday-Societies, the daughters of families 
connected by the ties of blood or of class meet at each others' 
houses, and are brought up in habits of friendship and intimacy, 
which are to be permanent. The results of this system are deeply 
interesting. The tone of cordiality which presides in the habits 



472 



of daily life, the sympathy that is at all times manifested as it is 
called forth by circumstances, tell of one heart and of one mind, as 
though all formed but one family. Is any sick or afflicted? It is a 
rivalry of care and consolation ! 

" To a vast amount of useful knowledge, calculated to prepare 
them for the duties of domestic life, the Genevese ladies add 
many accomplishments. In drawing and music, which are gene- 
rally cultivated, some of them excel, and these arts are frequently 
turned to benevolent purposes. 

" Occupying so exalted a position on the ladder of civilisation, 
Geneva should also take the lead in her charitable institutions; 
and she does so. There is help at hand for all who need it, and 
the importunity of rags and beggary is unknown V 

" It will be seen, from what I have said, that Geneva is in my 
eyes one of those exceptional countries, where, in politics as well 
as in morals, all that can be good is good; all that admits of im- 
provement has a tendency towards it 2 . " 

u Geneva, once free, attained in consequence of her independence 
to a height of prosperity without any other domain than the narrow 
tract of territory that borders her walls ! She soon secured an 
honourable position among the cities of Switzerland by her 
industry and her talent 3 . " 

Reader! How far removed is all this from the state of the Va- 
lais ! What centuries of distance between the adjoining Cantons ! 
What contrasts between Catholic and Protestant ! Is your opinion 
still on the balance? other writers shall turn it for you. Hitherto 
we have made the comparisons, although in the words of others. 
They shall now draw them for themselves. W r e shall be brief : 
the length to which we have already gone demands it, and we 
shall not follow our authors through the whole length of their 
parallels; we shall content ourselves with such short extracts 
as suffice to indicate the judgment they have formed. Let us enter 
Switzerland from the side of France. M. Cambry introduces us : 

In a moment you pass from the poverty, the disorder, and the 
neglect of the pays de Gex (Catholic France), to the Canton de 
Vaud, where all is order, industry, and propriety. " 

From the centre of this Protestant Canton, let us cast a glimpse 
north or south over two Catholic Cantons. On the one side Coxe 
tells us : "A comparison of the pays-de-Vaud with the sterile 
hills of Catholic Chablais, which present only a few towns situate 

1. D'Haussez, vol. i, pp. 56 to 82. — 2. idem, p. 101. — 3. Sehokke, vol. it, p. 22. 



at the water's edge, you will see the happy consequences of freedom 
under a mild and equitable government 1 . " 

A second traveller adds : " On leaving the Canton of Friburg 
Catholic, we enter the smiling, prosperous vale of the Canton of 
Vaud. The pleasure of the contrast kept us there some hours 2 . " 

We will cross this Canton of Friburg in order to visit Protest- 
ant Berne, and we will put ourselves under the guidance of the 
learned M. Raoul Rochette : " Without an inspection of the 
heraldic-insignia, the eye of the traveller will at once detect the 
line of demarcation between the States of Friburg and Berne; the 
admirable cultivation of the fields, the size and neatness of the 
rustic dwellings of Berne, oner such a contrast to the aspect of Fri- 
burg, that it could not escape notice; we cannot go fifty yards upon 
the high road without being sensible of the difference from the 
beauty of the route, which is not excelled by anything of the kind 
in France, and never perhaps, within so short a distance and in the 
same country, do we meet with signs so striking of the different 
effects of Governments. Berne is the region that in former days 
was styled Terra-inculta ; and now, under the administration of its 
Senate, it is become one of the richest in Europe. If then I had 
retained any doubts as to the carelessness and incapacity of the 
government of Friburg, they must have vanished the moment I 
quitted its boundary; and if on the other I had brought with me 
any lingering prejudices against the Bernese aristocracy, T must 
have renounced them as soon as T had set foot within their ter- 
ritory 3 . " 

Let us enter Saint-Gall, a mixed Canton, of which we have not 
hitherto spoken : " The populous class, " says Malte-Brun, " is 
sunk in wretchedness, especially in the Catholic part h " 

" At Saint-Gall (the Protestant-town) all was animation, " says 
Coxe, " all were busy; and the aspect contrasted strongly with that 
of Constance, which we had just quitted s . " 

" In this town, which is exclusively of the Reformed Faith, the 
streets are wide and handsome, and the houses are well-kept. 
Cleanliness everywhere presides. Many of the private houses 
have their own fountain. All is bustle and activity; and the 
flourishing condition of the place is the result of the almost incon- 
ceivable industry of its citizens, who have manufactures of linen, 
muslin, and embroidery 6 . " 

" In a town so devoted to commerce T was surprised to find the 



1. Coxe, vol. ii, pp. 85, 86. — 2. Aragon,p. 108. — 3. Raoul Rochette, vol. i, pp. 62, 63 . 
— 4. Malte-Brun, vol. vn, p. 127. — 5. Coxe, vol. i, p. 28. — 6. Zurlauben, vol. u, p. -473. 



174 



arts and sciences cultivated, and literature in high repute. In the 
library there are thirteen folio volumes of M.S. letters of the Great 
Swiss and German Reformers *. " 

We turn to mixed Appenzell, as a Canton peculiarly adapted to 
our purpose, as the members of the two communions live at distinct 
points. We have ten guides, who all lead us to the same conclusion. 
And first, we will take a Protestant author, were it but to compare 
his production with that of our subsequent authorities : " The 
Canton consists of two separate Republics : Rhodes interior, or 
Catholic; and Rhodes exterior, or Protestant. The second ranks 
with the most industrious and commercial countries of Europe ; it 
reminds one of a vast English garden, where the most varied rural 
prospects alternate with the finest mountain scenery 2 . 

Coxe is rather more explicit : "Rhodes exterior is larger, and more 
populous in proportion than Rhodes interior, and the Protestants are 
in general better calculated for commercial pursuits, and more 
industrious than the Catholics 3 . " 

Sommerlatt adds a new trait : "In Inner Rhodes the public 
education is sadly neglected, which is not the case in the other 
district, where in 1827 there were already 73 schools''. 

We will now hear a traveller whom we are especially pleased to 
cite, on account of his being himself a Catholic : " Civilisation is 
further advanced, " says Count Walsh • "information and competence 
are more widely diffused in Protestant than in Catholic AppenzelL 
The population is also greater by two-thirds. Generous citizens, 
enriched by commerce, have made a noble use of their fortunes by 
founding establishments of benevolence and public utility, such as 
orphan-houses and schools for destitute children s . * 

" Inner Rhodes is inhabited by a population of lax morality, 
uncivilised and fierce, idle, and therefore poor. Outer Rhodes is 
one of the most populous districts of Europe, as well as the most 
industrious and commercial. The people are distinguished for 
their skill in the mechanical arts. The number of manufactories 
is considerable 6 . " 

if We find but few instances of poverty in AppenzelL Compe- 
tence is general, particularly among the Protestants, who are more 
industrious than the Catholics 7 . " 

" The same facts are reproduced in Canton Argovia. There are 
several manufactories in an advanced state of progress, especially in 

L Coxe, vol. t, p. 29. — 2. Picot, pp. 353, 359. — 3. Coxe, vol. l, p. 31. — 4. Sommeiiatt, 
p. 381. — 5; Walsh, vol. i, p. 4-20. — 6. Rougemont, pp. 321, 322. — 7. Zurlauben, vol. n, 
p. 150. 



178 



the Protestant part. Trade flourishes, favoured by the admirable 
order of the roads l , 

We finish our tour with the Valais and Geneva, thus returning 
to our starting-point : " Although the Lower Valais is greatly in 
advance of the part of Savoy which we had just left, it is nevertheless 
very miserable, especially when compared with the luxuriant 
Canton of Vaud. Covered with vines, and tall maize planted 
between them, and growing together without injury to either, such 
is the fertility of the soil 2 . " 

" At length, at the little village of Chene, we entered the territory 
of Geneva. After having sighed over the poverty of the Savoyards, 
our hearts were gladdened by the sight of the cleanliness and 
prosperity of Geneva, the abundant population, the fertility of the 
soil, and the number of country-houses scattered on the banks of 
the Lake K" 

We will now turn from the comparison of cantonal details to 
more generalising statements, and we shall see how on all points the 
superiority is awarded to the Protestant Cantons. 

Superiority of Numbers. — "In general/' says Baron Zuiiauben, 
"the Protestant Cantons are more populous than the Catholic. " 

Superiority of Commerce. — " The Protestant populations carry 
on a greater trade than the Catholic; the consequence of which is a 
larger measure of prosperity 4 . # 

Superiority in Agriculture and Industry. — H The Catholics, 
who are obliged to keep many holidays besides Sundays, are thus 
greatly hindered in their labour. All field-work is then suspended, 
by order of the Church. In order to make up for this interruption, 
it becomes necessary to employ other hands ; and if from poverty 
this is impossible, the crops suffer. We remarked that the Protest- 
ant peasant has generally prepared his land or his vineyard earlier 
than his Catholic neighbour 8 . " 

" Agriculture is as much neglected in Unterwalden as in Schwitz. 
The valley of Enghelbert is the most industrious; but it is here in 
general, more than in any other part, that we realise what has been 
observed by sundry travellers, that the Catholic Cantons are less 
industrious than the Protestant, the consequence of a deficient 
education, and of time lost in fetes. The faults of the people, 
ignorance, superstition, dislike of improvements, all spring from 
the same source. The Catholic religion is professed here. 

" The Cantons of the North and East are the most industrious; 

1. Somrnerlatt, pp. 445, 446. — 2. Aragon, p. 74. — 3. Coxe, vol. n, pp. 66, 67. — 4. Zur- 
latlben, vol. I, p. 45i. — 5. idem, pp. 451 to 454. 



176 



that is to say, the Protestant Cantons. It is very common in 
Switzerland to find excellent artists and manufacturers among the 
agriculturists; and doubtless it is owing to this circumstance that 
the country is able to compete advantageously with the manufac- 
tures of Alsace for cotton stuffs, and with those of Lyons for silks. 
The Cantons of Zurich, Basle, Geneva, Glaris, Neufchatel, and outer 
Appenzell are distinguished above the rest for their industry 1 . " 

Superiority of Information. — Coxe tells us that : " The people 
are not generally so well educated in the Catholic as in the Protest- 
ant Cantons 2 ." 

A tabular view will prove this : 



Number of presses in Switzerland. 



PROTESTANT, 



Zurich 

Berne 

Glaris 

Basle 

Schaffausen. 

Vaud 

Neufchatel . 
Appenzell . . 
Geneva 



Lucerne — 

Uri 

Schwitz 

Unterwalden. 

Zug 

Friburg 

Soleure 

Tessin 

Valais 



80 

Journals. 



22 S 



PROTESTANT. 

Messager de la Suisse. 
Correspondant general de la Suisse. 
Gazette du Vendredi. 
Nouvelle Gazette. 
Narrateur hebdomadaire. 
L'arui des Suisses. 
Gazette de Lausanne. 
Nouvelliste Vaudois. 
Journal de Geneve. 
Bibliotheque Universelle. 



CATHOLIC. 

Gazette de Zug. 
Courrier Suisse. 
Gazette du Tessin. 



Divines 

Lawyers 

Mathematicians 

Physicians, chymists, botani 

Poets and musicians 

Antiquaries, etc 

Historians 



Great men of Switzerland. 

(As cited by Zurlaubeu, vol. it, p. 23, etc.) 
128 Protestants. 



24 
51 
75 
18 
69 
104 



50 Catbolics. 

1 — 

5 — 

12 — 

16 — 

7 — 

35 — 



J69 Protestants. 126 Ctfbalics. 



1. Balbi, p. 212. — 2. Coxe, vol. i, p. 108. — d. Mallc-Brun, vol.vn, p. 197. 



177 



Thus, in a population where the Protestants are to the Catho- 
lics as 3 to % their distinction is as i to i, according to a Catholic 
authority. 

i( In the Catholic Cantons/"' adds Madame Aragon, " information 
is less rapidly diffused ; and, education being much less liberal, 
improvements are not so readily adopted *. " 

" Switzerland, and especially Protestant Switzerland, is one of 
the countries in which information is the most widely diffused. 
The Cantons in which education is the most carefully attended to 
are Zurich, Berne, Basle, Schaffhausen, Argovia, Yaud, Neuichatel, 
and Geneva. Those in which the industrial arts flourish most are 
Zurich, Thurgovia, Argovia, Basle, Glaris, Geneva, Outer Appen- 
zell, and Neuichatel 2 . " 

That is to say, in the Protestant Cantons. " We will trace the 
literary career of Catholic Switzerland, which is by no means so 
brilliant as that of ProtestantSwitzerland 3 . " 

" In the Catholic Cantons ignorance and misery sometimes go 
hand-in-hand, and distress the eyes of the traveller. The taste for 
processions, pilgrimages, and other ac ts of useless devotion introduced 
by the monks, has encouraged a spirit of idleness which is the 
bane of trade and agriculture, and which augments the numbers of 
the poor. Hence we see in some parts the most grievous neglect 
of the resources of the soil, while elsewhere we find a state of cul- 
tivation which might serve as a model to the neighbouring coun- 
tries. In the Cantons where the peasants bow the neck to the 
yoke of the clergy, men had lost all energy, all elevation of mind ; 
servile and taciturn as slaves, they had forgotten their rights, and 
knew nothing beyond the performance of a mechanical and un- 
reasoning obedience '\ " 

Superiority in Beneficence. — Proved by the silence of a Swiss, 
Catholic author in the following passage : 

u Switzerland offers admirable examples of all that is necessary 
for the maintenance of health, and the general well-being of so- 
ciety. This is shown in the institutions and the mode of providing 
for the preservation of health. Zurich, Vaud, Basle, Geneva, and 
Berne" (all Protestant Cantons), "possess establishments of this 
kind, which may compete, with the most vaunted of all other 
countries. The other Cantons suffer so severely from the want of 
similar institutions, that it is difficult to comprehend the reason v v 
Superiority in Financial Position. — " There are three Catholic 

1, Aragon, p. 99. — 2. Rougemont, p. 302. — 3. Zurlauben. — 4. Depping, vol. i, pp. 33 
to 49. — 5. Franscim, p. 171. 

12 



178 



Cantons, Lucerne, Friburg, and Soleure, each of which enjoys a 
pretty considerable revenue ; hut it is said that after the expenses 
of the government are paid, what goes into the public treasury 
does not amount to much; moreover, in these and the other Catholic 
Cantons the larger revenue is that enjoyed by the clergy and the 
monks. It must be observed that the revenues of the Protestant 
Cantons are greater in proportion than those of the Catholic Can- 
tons; in the latter the income always exceeds the expenditure. 
Basle and Schaffhausen, though of small extent, are yet through their 
trade proportionably richer than the three Cantons of Lucerne, 
Friburg, and Soleure ; but the wealthiest of the Cantons are Berne 
and Zurich; the latter especially, by means of its trade and in pro- 
portion to its territory ; although, in fact, the revenue of Berne is 
double that of Zurich, if we take into the account its great extent 
of territory l . " 

Superiority in Freedom from Crime. — Proved by the praise 
awarded exclusively to the Protestant Cantons by Franscini : " As 
to capital punishments, we might be convinced that, in spite of the 
severity of the law, Switzerland is one of the countries where it is 
least frequently called into operation; it is well known that at 
Geneva, Basle, and Neufchatel, long periods pass over without a 
single execution taking place. In the Protestant Canton-de-Vaud, 
for instance, with a population of 200,000, there had been an in- 
terval of 25 years between the executions 2 . " 

Whence this general superiority? Malte-Brun replies : " Christi- 
anity, while it banished the ancient deities of Helvetia, brought in a 
new growth of popular superstitions. In the Catholic Cantons, re- 
ligion consists only in a round of external practices. In the others, 
it is a benignant influence. Perhaps it is to the ascendancy of 
Protestantism in Switzerland that we must attribute the universal 
diffusion of the spirit of concord and toleration 3 . " 

In order to be strictly just, we will subjoin the reason given for 
this Protestant superiority by a zealous Catholic : " Generally, in 
Glaris as in Appenzell, the Catholics have continued to be shepherds, 
while the Protestants have turned their attention to trade or ma- 
nufactures ; the mediocrity of the one contrasts with the competence 
of the other, and it would seem at first sight that in this world it 
is better to live with the latter than with the Catholics; but there 

IS ANOTHER WORLD, IN WHICH THIS INFERIORITY IS PROBABLY COM- 
PENSATED ' - 

1. Zurlauben, vol. r, p. 'J08. — 2. Fraiiscini, p. 101. — 3. Malte-Brun, vol. ij, p. 120. — 
4. Rocliette, vol. u, p. 154. 



179 



To such an argument we have no answer ! 

The conclusion of every comparison brings the same embarrass- 
ment. We fear lest we seem to exult in an easy victory, and we 
leave the matter in the hands of the reader, although our modera- 
tion almost assumes the appearance of treachery to the cause of 
truth. So be it. Strong in the purity of our motives, we shall 
persevere in this course ; and we shall say to both Catholic and 
Protestant — you have seen Geneva and the Valais , the Canton-de- 
Vaud and Friburg : decide for yourself. 

But we are on the borders of Germany, where Protestant 
Prussia and Catholic Austria, towering above the petty states by 
which they are surrounded, naturally proyoke comparison. What 
will be its result ? 



ROMAN CATHOLIC AUSTRIA 




Although our title is confined to these two monarchies, our 
subject will overflow and extend to the whole of Germany, which 
we shall view as divided into two parts : Germany of the South, 
Catholic; Germany of the North, Protestant. Here, Austria and 
Prussia will appear as the heads of these two bodies ; in fact, it is 
they who direct, inspire, influence, and impel all the Germanic 
members. 

Our parallel will here be on a different plan to the one we have 
hitherto followed. Instead of comparing successively the two na- 
tions in each of their component details, we shall study both of 
them uninterruptedly, as a whole, so as to bring into juxtaposition 
two complete pictures. 

We shall commence by the Empire of Austria. Here again is a 
difference between the uiethod which we followed with regard to 
other nations, and the one that we intend to adapt for these. 
Instead of confining ourselves to the enumeration of the different 
classes of society, and their different aspects, we propose at once 
to present the primary idea of the whole Austrian system of Go- 
vernment, and then to bring to the support of our declaration the 
documents which we have collected. 




AND 




COMPARED. 




182 



1. Austria. — In Austria, two powers, the government and the 
clergy, have united in working the nation to their mutual advantage. 
The Catholic clergy, at first, strove to govern hoth the people and 
the nobles; but the nobles resisted, and took the place coveted by 
the clergy. The civil power is therefore master, only it reigns in 
the nation by the means and tutoring of the Church. A compro- 
mise exists; the Church is the instrument, the government is the 
hand; but the instrument acts according to its own aptitude, so 
that a harmonious concurrence exists between the two powers. 
Here, more than anywhere else, Catholicism may be studied in 
statesmen. Rome has fashioned Austria, although Rome obeys 
Austria. This fact is important to us, who are seeking above all the 
influence of religion. But what spring have these two forces brought 
into play to enthrall the nation? In one word : they have deprived 
it, as much as possible, of liberty and instruction. We say as much 
as possible, for we shall see that, more than once, they are obliged 
to give way, under the pressure of external circumstances, to the 
general movement of Germany, and to let in a few rays of that 
light which cannot be totally extinguished ; but we shall see also 
that the curtain is drawn aside with such precaution, that it may 
be guessed that the hand which withdraws it wishes to admit, 
not the free light of day, but a deceitful twilight. 

Were this theory on the Popish government of Austria sup- 
ported only by one authority, we might suspect it to be untrue. 
But no : a multitude of writers unanimously bear witness to its 
reality ; and, since we wish to be believed only after having pro- 
duced our proofs, we shall allow our authors to speak for themselves. 

We said that the clergy had, at first, striven to enthrall the 
people upon its own account; that afterwards, itself had been made 
serviceable to the state, and, at length, that both unitedly had 
laboured to work the nation to their mutual advantage. Here are 
our proofs: — 

" Morally, the clergy exercise more authority than the nobility, 
and to this day they have over the ignorant masses numerous 
means of action; but the danger of ecclesiastical influence has been 
long ago provided against, by rigorously subordinating it to that of 
the State; and, far from the clerical power being willing to act 
against the calculating and directing power, it can use no better 
instrument of administration and police 1 

e: The Austrian aristocracy take advantage of the indifference of 



1. Desprez, vol. i, p. 188. 



183 



the people, and of their attachment to their prejudices, in the one 
aim of keeping up among them their old habits of servile obedience 
and superstition. They regard ignorance as the sacred pledge of 
their hereditary supremacy. There is no college or court councillor 
so insignificant but he draws himself up in the presence of a man 
of low birth, and treats him as a paria. 

" Nor are the priests backward to keep up the spirit of uncer- 
tainty, and the degradation proper to men, whose happiness appears 
to consist in not thinking. Concealed behind the curtain of reli- 
gious belief, they propagate widely the principle of obliged ignor- 
ance, or the more fatal one still, of demi-civilisation, in order to 
give a permanent seat to their sacerdotal authority. 

" Had the people the privilege of looking a little into public 
affairs, were the press to inform them daily of what was passing 
without, they might perhaps conceive the wish to know the origin 
and price of their happiness. But they are satisfied to live penned 
up like cattle, and their fatherland is to them nothing more than a 
manger, where the master, depositing oats and forage in quan- 
tities proportioned to his caprice or to the exigencies of his lords, 
allows him just enough to prevent his dying of hunger i % " 

Such weakening of the faculties supposes a very long and very 
powerful pressure. The spirit is evidently broken, and so com- 
pletely so that when a liberal prince attempted to raise the people, 
the people repelled the hand outstretched towards them : " The 
premature attempts of the Emperor Joseph, " says the Revue Bri- 
tannique, " to force upon an ignorant people reforms which this 
people was incapable of appreciating, were followed by a reaction. 
For the instruction of those who fancy that a good government is 
compatible with popular ignorance, the tragical history of this 
illustrious martyr of zealous, but autocratic, philanthropy should 
be written. The violent prejudice resulting from it against every 
thing like an amelioration, threw the power into the hands of the 
most inveterate enemies of progress 2 . " 

It is clear that the evil had passed into a chronic state; the pal- 
liative disappeared with the royal physician, and the gangrene 
reached, one after another, as far as the nations protected by the 
gasping patient : " To maintain the German supremacy, a per- 
severing machiavelism corrupted, in the countries swayed by the 
Austrian sceptre or patronage, all the civil and military insti- 
tutions, education, and even religion. To corrupt in order to 



1. Tai'dif, p. 48. — 2. Revue Bntamiique, 1847, NOV., Dec, p. 238. 



484 



reign, has always been the maxim of the Viennese Cabinet l . " 

But let us enter into details, and see whether it be true, as we 
have affirmed, that the first Austrian means of Government is 
repression of all liberty. 

First, no liberty of thought : " As to affairs of censorship, " says 
M. Bernard, " there are twelve offices for the revision of books, 
and as many censors, at Vienna, Prague, and Milan. Works are 
prohibited by one of these two formulas : Damnalur, and erga 
Schedam. The learned alone obtain condemned books of the first 
class; as to those of the second, any learned or rich man may 
obtain them by signing a paper, in which he declares that the 
prohibited books he wants are exclusively intended for his private 
use. The books upon which the Council of Censors places admit- 
titur may be sold, and meet with no difficulties in the market; 
but works which have only been admitted with the formula 
transeat, cannot be advertised in the journals 2 . " 

No liberty of commerce : " The advance of industry, " says 
the same author, " is stopped by an exaggerated , prohibitive 
system. Commerce pays for the blunders of the fatal policy of the 
timid Cabinet of Vienna, which dares not resist the invasions of a 
rival power. Austria is trying in vain to open fresh outlets to her 
threatened commerce, and to give a new impulse to her merchant 
service, which visibly tends, rather to grow weaker, than to in- 
crease 3 . " 

" The foreign trade of Austria in nowise answers to the extent 
of the monarchy, and the internal trade is far from having attained 
the degree of development it might enjoy. The bad policy of the 
government sacrifices the interests of the country to a ridiculous 
fear of any progress. Agricultural progress, increased during 
these latter years, does not yet answer to the fruitfulness of the 
soil *. " 

Not even individual liberty : " Until the year 1846, the lord 
was the only land-proprietor in Austria; the subject is a simple 
tenant; he cannot be more. By the side of this principle so 
withering to labour, was another which aggravated its conse- 
quences : the lords judged between his subjects; he did more in 
Gallicia and elsewhere, he judged in his own cause. And then, 
although in Hungary, the peasant might emigrate, buy, sell, make 
a will, marry without authorisation, and as he liked, he could 
not do so in the other provinces. There, he was not free to move, 



1. Heviie Britannique, NOV., Dec, p. 149. — 2. Bernard, pp. 1G to 13. — 3. idin, p. 228. — 
h, td.m, p. 23. 



185 

or to contract any agreement. He was a minor kept by the legisla- 
ture under perpetual guardianship; often blind, always haughty, 
and naturally selfish l . In Gallicia, for a whole farm, a peasant 
owed no less than three days' labour in the week, with six oxen and 
two men; that is, 156 days per year. In Hungary, he was only 
bound to give 108 days of one man's labour, but the loans in 
kind were rather more considerable ; for, besides the small taxes 
varying from one province to another, and the tithes on the pro- 
duce levied by the whole body of the clergy, the Hungarian lords 
took in addition a ninth portion of the corn. Happy would they 
still have been had they been freed from all other obligation, after 
having settled with the nobility and the church ; but the State 
claimed its part also, and demanded the more, as it had less to 
take from the privileged classes. In Gallica, in Bohemia, in all 
the provinces which are not constitutional, the nobles were subject 
to taxation; but the heaviest part, as may be well understood, fell 
upon the people. In Hungary and in Transylvania, where the 
nobles were not taxed, the people paid for all. The public 
burdens fell amost exclusively upon the laborious classes of the 
Empire. 

" Such was, until 1846, the law on property in Austria. The 
feudal system not only hampered socia] progress, but created very 
serious evils, and very great political perplexities in all the pro- 
vinces of the Empire; but none received more terrible blows than 
Gallicia. It is a dismal example set forth for the consideration of 
all Eastern Europe. Nowhere, save in the lands of slavery and 
thraldom, has the law been more ungrateful to the laborious 
classes, nor armed the nobles whith a more unjust and extensive 
power. It would be harsh to say that the lower classes had been 
premeditatingly pushed on to their ruin, but when on the brink 
they have not been kept back. A country, possessing all the ele- 
ments of wealth, has thus remained barren, and a frightful indi- 
gence bore sway there even before fresh w r oes called for mourning 
and famine. 

" What accumulated miseries in these wretched and repulsive- 
looking villages! Narrow dark huts formed of the branches of 
trees, rudely kept together with osier bands , and covered with 
straw and clay, unsymmetrically surround a ruined church ; such is 
the outside. Under the humble roof, men and cattle sleep pro- 
miscuously in winter upon the same straw bed. Rarely is there 



1. Be c .prez, vol. v, p. 1G4. 



186 



found within a camp bedstead, wooden seats, or cooking uten- 
sils. 

" Nothing can be more painful than the sight of the family at 
home, except it be the crowd of ragged labourers, whom the offi- 
cers of the domain drive before them like a herd of vile cattle, at 
dawn of day, to their forced drudgery. While their tattered gar- 
ments attest their indigence, their careworn and depressed coun- 
tenances shew clearer still their want of courage. It is easy to see 
here that their moral sufferings are not the lightest they endure. 

66 Yet these poor creatures, until 184-6, had always borne with 
patience the excessive rigours of their destiny, and of the laws; 
and more than one interesting proof of their resignation might be 
given. Here is an example taken out of a thousand others: the 
poor inhabitants of a village had for lord an Austrian Count, who, 
for thirty years, had been in the habit of exacting and obtaining 
from them an increase of drudgery entirely illegal. One day, to 
conquer their refusal, he called in the aid of the commissary of 
circle, who presented himself escorted by a squadron of dragoons. 
The elders of the village, spokesmen of the community, said that 
they had for several years, and in vain, complained of an abuse 
of power, and that, on this occasion, they humbly petitioned to be 
authorised to quit their farms with their families, and to seek 
another lord. The commissary's only answer was, to have them 
stretched out, one after the other, in the position of criminals 
going to be beaten. The youngest was past seventy. They sub- 
mitted, and received six blows. This treatment was to continue, 
and increase by twenty additional blows to each victim; such was 
the gradation in this sort of torture, often mortal; but the old men 
could not endure this fresh trial; they gave way, acknowledged 
themselves to blame, and returned sorrowfully to their task *. '* 

It must not be supposed that this kind of degrading punishment 
is peculiar to these provinces : far from it ; it is the national correc- 
tion of Austria : (i The salutary and venerable institution of the 
schlague (punishment of beating) exists in Austria in all its pri- 
meval vigour. It is a pleasant addition to the other pleasures of 
the soldier's profession. No commentary is necessary to prove the 
immeasurable distance this alone creates between our institutions 
and those which rule Austria. Honour and beating are two things 
so opposite to each other, that they cannot associate. The degrading 
and afflictive penalty of the schlague shews, of itself, to what a 



1. Desprez, vol. i, pp. 166 to 171. 



187 



degree of debasement and brutality are still reduced the popula- 
tions swayed by the sceptre of Ferdinand L When the emperors 
of Austria engaged in fatal and ruinous warfare, it was through a 
feeling of pride, in which the nation had no part. Because it was 
commanded to march, it marched ; it is too debased and enthralled 
to reason upon its victories or defeats V 

" There exists no system of government so absolute, no Cabinet 
so wily, so devoid of delicacy, so contemptible, and consequently 
none more versatile, than that of Vienna V 

'* And what other means were there for repressing liberty ? Let 
us hear : " The timorous Cabinet of Vienna, as its sole means of 
preventing a revolt, places cannon on all the thoroughfares, and 
sentinels at every street-corner. The army seems to exist for no 
other purpose. The primary condition of a really national army 
is entirely wanting; no trace is perceived in it of any energetic 
feeling of nationality or morality. The penalties of the rod and 
the bastinado, existing in the military legislation, and the law 
which incorporates vagabonds into the army, are not likely to 
raise the sentiment of dignity in the soldier, who, in fact, embraces 
his profession with repugnance, since he views himself as in a 
treadmill. The Austrian soldier, debased to the level of a machine, 
never examines whether the order given him is just or unjust ; he 
obeys like a musket, and is, himself, like one in the hands of his 
superior. 

" The same mechanical discipline which characterises the mili- 
tary organisation, also distinguishes the civil administration. It 
is a state machine of unexampled complexity, having no other 
tendency than to preserve what exists ; a tendency which arrests 
every independent development of public life, and embarrasses the 
smallest acts by a multitude of formalities and chicaneries. This 
machine has absorbed every movement of the State, and the most 
trifling step of the citizens is as much as possible watched over, con- 
trolled, and brought into the sphere of supreme inspection. The 
race of Austrian bureaucracy is a veritable plague. Without any 
high political tendency, knowing no interest but their own, crouch- 
ing with mercenary humility at the feet of the superior classes, 
and full of insolent pride in presence of their inferiors, before 
whom they love to strut as masters, these officials devour the 
substance of general wealth and private industry. 

™ The fact must be tested with one's own eyes before an idea can 



1. Tardif, pp. 43 to 45, — 2. idem, p. 48. 



188 



be formed of the incredible number of these agents. In the civil 
service alone they outnumber 1 50,000. 

"Beside the armed force, everywhere visible, besides the univer- 
sally-meddling officials, there glides in the shade the occult influence 
of the police, which, marching in the same rank as the censorship, 
has everywhere and always its ear turned .to all that is said, and 
its eye open upon all that is printed % ." 

To conceive a just idea of this police, read the following lines : 

" The different professions were enrolled to serve the police ; I 
omit the most scandalous to mention only twelve hundred hackney- 
coachmen; about thirty thousand servants, called up now and then 
to open their hearts respecting their masters, and the appearance 
of their households; eight thousand door-keepers of the city 
(Vienna) and its outskirts ; tradesmen and their clerks might also 
render some service. Sum total : one-half of the people were spies 
upon the other half. Mysteries of vexations, treasures of annoyance 
and weariness, were accumulated in the people's heart 2 . " 

Thus, no liberty of thought, no liberty of commerce, no indivi- 
dual liberty; drudgery for the peasants, the schlague for the 
soldier, humiliation for officials, and secret police exercised even 
by the citizens themselves : such is the justification of our state- 
ment. The first means of government for Austria is the thwarting 
of all freedom. We shall see that the second is to oppose the free 
progress of education : 

"The way of the Austrian government, " says the Dictionnaire de 
la Conversation , " has ever been to ensure the strengthening and 
development of the statu quo. Thanks to the zeal and severity of 
the President of the Aulic Police, foreigners, for the most part 
Swiss, who occupied places of professors or preceptors, were obliged 
to quit the Empire in 1821 ; and in 1824, the soil of Austria was 
interdicted to certain persons on account of their writings or poli- 
tical opinions. And lastly, the order which prescribes that all 
works of Austrian subjects, intended for the foreign press, shall 
be previously submitted to the censure of the government, was 
extended in 1824 to engravings, lithographies, or any other kind of 
prints 3 . " 

u Since 1821, no private person has obtained the authorisation to 
give to his own children a foreign tutor; one is tempted to believe 
that the government wish the education and instruction of youth 
to lie confided to the Jesuits. Since 1829, dissenters from Roman- 

1. Rev, p. 63. — 2. Bernard. — 3. Dictionnaire de la Conversation, p. 460. 



- * 



189 



ism are forbidden to teach anything to young Catholics , except, 
music, dancing, and fencing. Studies in any foreign land count 
for nothing, and must be gone over again in the country. The 
prohibition from selling or distributing Bibles published by Bible 
Societies, and notably those in the Bohemian tongue, printed at 
Berlin, was renewed in November, -1822 1 

So true it is that the Austrian Government derives its inspira- 
tions on this subject from Romanism, that the Popes have tried to 
apply the same principles to ail Catholic Germany. " The Popes, " 
says the same authority, " under the pretext of reconstituting the 
Church, shaken in consequence of the Reformation, treated Catholic 
Germany with the greatest despotism. In order to attain their end 
with greater ease, they made use of the Jesuits, who, in concert 
with the mendicant friars, filled the universities, while at court, as 
confessors and councillors of princes, they mixed themselves up in 
everything, and secured in their own hands the entire education 
of youth. Thus was systematically compressed the glorious burst 
of reason and scientific culture, which had promised so much, 
especially in the depths of Germany during the latter years of 
the XV th ; and the first years of the XVI th century. From that 
time, every means of enlightenment through the light of Protest- 
antism was taken from the population; while they were given 
over to new superstitions, and to a multitude of institutions esta- 
blished in the sole aim of propagating error, and blinding and 
stupifyingthe mind, until it should bend itself patiently and with- 
out effort to all the designs of the hierarchy. Besides an ignoble 
bigotry and gross ignorance, the greatest vices and most monstrous 
immorality appeared to have become the portion of the Catholic 
Church. The sincere friends of truth and learned philanthropists 
were the only beings towards whom she shewed herself inexorable. 
All the forms of Catholic worship, however fantastical, were 
regarded as so many privileges, and consecrated with so much the 
more tenacity, that they were the objects of satire and contempt. 
To avoid the danger of prose tytism, the church was not ashamed to 
throw the human mind into darkness, and to keep it methodically 
there; and then, to shew herself more Catholic than the Galilean 
Church, she allowed herself to be totally subjugated by the Court 
of Rome \" 

Mirabeau makes a similar remark : " The want of knowledge 
and industry of Catholic Germany must be attributed to the bigotry, 

1. Dictionnaire de la Conversation, p. 463. — 2. idem, pp. 369, 370. 



190 



which, in those superb countries, sways both government and 
people. Festivals, processions, pilgrimages, mummery, render the 
latter idle, stupid, and careless; the sway of the priests renders the 
former ignorant, oppressive, despotic, cruel, and, above all, impla- 
cably inimical to everything that might enlighten the human 
mind. These two causes are eternally destructive of all knowledge, 
and the ruin of knowledge brings on that of commerce and in- 
dustry K" 

" The Catholic universities in Germany are in the worst possible 
state, and have never contributed to the progress of knowledge. 
The Elector of Mayence has, however, j List formed one which pro- 
jects some light around; but to do this he has called in learned 
Protestants, and those are the only professors deserving of any repu- 
tation 2 . " 

But, to confine ourselves to Austria, let us hear, on her distrust 
of all light, an author as commendable by his knowledge as by his 
moderation : " Every professor (in Austria), is compelled either to 
write out a manual of the branch he professes to teach, or to adopt 
one of the existing manuals, in order, it is said, to spare the students 
the fatigue of making long extracts from books, and also, doubtless, 
that the text of the lessons should be submitted to the authorities, 
approved of by them, and the professor prevented from going beyond 
his bounds 3 . In oral extemporaneous teaching, the professor would 
have too much opportunity to be free and say what he chose. 

" The University of Vienna has no fame ; it has no professor of 
renown; no celebrated work has proceeded from it. What is the 
reason of this, when it has so much encouragement, and so many 
pupils? Is it the fault of the country, or that of the government? 
The influence of the Jesuits, and their method of teaching, is felt 
in the frequent examinations of the faculty, and in the division of 
the classes in the colleges \ " 

" The only fault I shall find with the articles of discipline in the 
Theresian Academy is, that they attempt to rule in too much 
detail the conduct of the young men, and become impracticable 
from their minuteness . I find more serious fault with the following : 
" As the pupils should have an equally kindly feeling towards each 
other, it is necessary that they should have no private connexion or 

1. Mirabeau, vol. i, p. 34. — 2, Hem, p. 223. — 3. The intention is to spare the students 
the trouble of writing from the dictation of the professor, and committing to paper the course 
of lectures. The piofessors must therefore have a book which forms the basis and text of 
their lessons. This book is examined and approved by the authorities ; it is even frequently 
enjoined on professors to take such and such authors for text. (Girardin, p. 205.) — k. idem' 
pp. 182, 183. 



191 



friendship. It is necessary for other motives also. These friendships 
are injurious to mutual esteem, and also to the universal harmony 
of the house. The pupils are therefore to have neither exclusive 
preference nor repugnance for each other. }> This is surely carrying 
out too far the love of directing and inspecting. 1 cannot blame too 
severely such a spirit of police and inquisition. To prevent the 
disorder sometimes accruing from the friendships of young people, 
is the duty of masters; but to proscribe friendship, to forbid 
confidence, is a crime against human nature, for it is destroying a 
great good to prevent an evil rarely met "with. Doubtless it is con- 
venient for the prefects (Jesuit chiefs) to take young men one by one; 
they are more dependent and submissive, having no idea of support- 
ing one another; but it is with this college police, carried to such a 
degree of annoyance and umbrage, as it is with public police when 
carried too far, it prevents a few bad actions, but dries up the 
spring of all good ones, and thus injures more than it benefits l . " 

Ci ( There must be instilled into the children (says the Manual), 
' those ideas only, which are suitable to men of their state and 
t condition; above all, the will must be acted upon; they must be 
6 accustomed to respect authority, and this respect must be the 
' motive of their obedience. Examples will be in this respect the 
• best lesson ; school books must present such examples as are fitted 
e to make an impression upon their minds; the priests especially 
c have this care in charge, because it devolves upon them to form 
( the morals of the people. 3 As it is seen, the Austrian government 
is fond of directing the will and mind of the people ; such is its 
constant aim. Austria has formed its schools upon the plan of its 
government, seeking to fashion from infancy the people into what 
it chooses them to be and to remain. In this country, good and 
evil, all is agreed 2 . 33 

If we were to characterise in a single word the governmental and 
clerical system of Austria, we should say that it is essentially 
stationary. (i The death of Francis I, 73 says M. Bernard, " and 
the advent to the throne of his successor, Ferdinand I, brought 
about no change of system from the Austrian Government, ever 
devoted to immobility. A horror of change preserves it from all 
militant ardour. In its idolatrous respect for facts, it suffers facts 
to take place in a direction totally opposed to its sympathies, wishes, 
and secret efforts. It tries to let nothing move ; but, when it cannot 
prevent a change, it submits to it, and does all it can that at least 



1. Girardill, pp. 207, 208. — 2. Idem, pp. 224, 225. 



192 



it may be the last change. In politics, it worships nothing but 
repose. A lasting usurpation, in its eyes, is but a commencing 
legitimacy. The system followed out hitherto by the Austrian 
government is that temporising, palliating system, wholly passive, 
in which a vague and purile fear of all movement, all action, and 
all progress, takes the place of political ideas; and which may be 
summed up in the famous words : ' After me, the Deluge ! ' 

" Prince Metteruich, in the Austrian oligarchy, which for two 
centuries has been working the government solely on its own 
account, has no friends, no rivals; this shews little ambition, little 
activity of mind. The great Austrian lords live in their families, 
or among each other ; play, walk, go to the theatre, are assiduously 
intent upon the plays, the actors, their horses, their sport, their 
lands, and leave without debate the management of the State to 
M. de Metternich. 

" Who does not know it ? For a long, a very long, time Austria 
has been what we see it to-day. Since the XVI 111 century, not to go 
further back, no internal change in its government or social state 
has forced it to alter its policy. It is the classic ground of traditions 
and habits, observed to-day, because they Were observed yesterday. 
There the past is all powerful over the present, and the present is 
scarcely more than the continuation and reproduction of the past. 
The thing endowed in Austria with strength and power is neither 
the nation, nor public opinion, nor the nobility, nor the officials, 
noryet the Emperor, who possesses the least of any; it is habit, 
custom, life by the day, routine. 

" For three centuries the cause of Austria has been that of 
stationary rule, of absolute stability; under this rule she lives; all 
her affairs, all her interests, are measured by it . Should she try to 
become a little liberal, what would she do with the throes of Italy, 
the recollections of Bohemia, the weak heavings of Hungary, the 
cries of Gallicia? These populations ask nothing from her to-day, 
because they expect nothing ; but, if the faintest opportunity were 
opened for them, what a deluge of complaints, recriminations, 
desires, attempts, would overflow l . " 

Such are the administrative means set to work by the government, 
aided by the clergy. Now, of these very Catholic means, what has 
been the result? Such is the question which remains for us to 
study. 

Here is, first, a general auswer : 



1. Bernard, p. 213. 



" The people have remained backward in the career of progress, 
and, with the exception of Bohemia, Moldavia, and Lombardy, 
where the progress that may be found must be attributed to 
particular, and, so to speak, local causes, the Austrian empire is to 
this day at the same degree of material prosperity as it was in the 
first years after the war. 

" What, above all else, must be looked upon as the cause of this 
backward state of Austria, is that inconceivable political system, 
which consists in conjuring away every question, in putting aside, 
without destroying, every cause of change. 

" What have been the results of this policy? Within, the 
government has alienated from itself the sympathies of the people; 
the State is burdened with a mass of ever-increasing debts ; material 
prosperity has made and still makes none but infinitely slow and 
almost derisory progress : intellectual interests are entirely set aside. 
Without, Austria has lost power, respect, and influence ; she owes 
the place she occupies among the great powers of Europe merely 
to a certain veneration for her ancient power; as to her real influence, 
she has lost it long since, and although she has the presidency in 
the German Diet, and notwithstanding the fascination of days of 
old which her name awakens, she has seen all her influence in 
Germany carried away and engrossed by Prussia. The Austrian 
influence is completely annihilated in the East, and in Italy it is 
restricted to a few Papal Legations, and to the great powers of Parma, 
Modena, Lucca, and San Marino ! Such are the splendid results 
and valuable fruits that a peace of five-and-twenty years has brought 
forth and matured for Austria and her government ! Devoid of all 
solid bases, and of every life-giving principle; fallen, as to its 
outward relations, in the public opinion of Europe; given up to 
foreign and hostile influences upon all its frontiers, the Austrian 
Empire cannot even secure to its own subjects the temporary and 
exclusive comfort of an assured and flourishing existence. An 
inanimate mechanism can produce nothing that has life. The 
Austrian Empire is being carefully embalmed; it is being wound 
round minutely to make it last, thus, powerless and immovable, as 
long as possible; but swathe it as they may, it will inevitably fall 
into dissolution, somewhat like the bodies overwhelmed at Pompeii, 
which dissolve into dust as soon as a ray of sun or the slightest breath 
lights upon them 1 . " 



1. Bernard, p. 213 to 232. 



S3 



194 



After this general view of the results obtained by the Austrian 
Government, let us enter into particulars. 

The first result of this coalition of Church and State to work the 
nation has necessarily been fatal to the two conspirators . A religion 
preached without conviction creates unbelievers; administrative 
agents formed to grind the people profit by the lesson, and grind 
their masters, and thus the snare formed for others entraps those 
who laid it. This is taught by the history of all nations, especially 
that of Austria. And first for the Church : " To say that the 
government is bigoted would be erroneous • a pompous religion, 
admitted without reflection, much music, and few words, that is 
what was given to the people ; they came to the churches to have 
their ears and eyes charmed, and might unite the greatest vices 
with an apathetic admiration for holy things ; this Catholicism, far 
more material than that of France, may be expressed as the 
worship of two of the five senses 1 , " 

"Notwithstanding the universal respect paid to all religious 
observances in Austria, it is clear, for all who have the opportunity 
of noticing the manners of the country, and of interrogating the 
popular feeling, that little by little, and in silence, superstitious 
practices are falling into disuse among the enlightened classes \ now 
they exclusively form the appanage of poverty and ignorance, just as 
the black bread and knitted jacket do 2 . " 

The just punishment fallen upon the Church has also fallen upon 
the State. It had formed its agents for bribery, and its corrupt 
agents have deceived it : " Each province is governed one way or 
another ; each state agent follows out his private end, often diame- 
trically opposite to that of the other agents. The financial admi- 
nistration has differences with the political authorities, and the 
military administration with both. The one has lawsuits against 
the other, lasting for years, and glories in its victory when it is able 
to wrench anything from its adversary ; while it never comes to 
any one's mind, that, after all, they serve one and the same 
country/' 

The fatal caste of the aristocracy has caused corruption to 
overflow widely around. It is to the nobility that Austria owes 
her vitiation to the very core. It must be left to skulking sta- 
tistics, concealed as much as may be by the government, to form 
into figures the ruin of families, and the great anti-social effects 
of universal corruption. 



1. Rey, p. 59. — 2. Trollope, vol. i, p. 235. 



193 

" There were too many agents in Austria, and too many useless 
ones, to be well paid; the majority did not gain half their live- 
lihood, and they were left to procure the remainder from the 
pockets of the public; from thence arises that universal venality 
so odious to foreigners. With a wretched bank-note, a man might 
obtain anything, even simple justice ! and without it the agents 
would subject him to interminable annoyances." These things 
will lead us to understand the state of finances : " Austria, during 
twenty-five years of thorough peace , has not yet been able to esta- 
blish an equilibrium between her receipts and her expenditure, 
nor to get rid of the deficit, which, by returning at regular periods, 
exacts fresh loans, and unceasingly augments the public debt l ." 

Go through, now, the different classes of the people, and pene- 
trate to the very sources of public welfare, and everywhere you 
will find a state of things in harmony with the corruption of the 
governing powers, and the ruin of the finances. Let this be 
judged of by the state of agriculture. And, first, let us go back 
by a few years : " The mountainous parts of the country are only 
suited for the cultivation of corn, on condition of being tilled with 
the irresistible sedulousness of the Swiss, upon which it would be 
folly to depend in Austria. Agriculture demands cattle, instru- 
ments, ready money; how could the poor vine-dresser obtain it 
all ? It is computed that the peasant pays in taxes double what 
the nobles pay; that is to say, what with direct and indirect 
taxation, he gives away more than half his income, as in the fif- 
teenth century. Now, agriculture being a fatiguing and compli- 
cated work, so long as the largest portion of the Austrian nation 
will not come to the resolution of giving up its laziness, or 
rather, so long as a greater degree of liberty will not stimulate it 
thereto, the best views of the government will be of no effect V 

In sixty years has much progress been made on this point ? A 
writer of our own day replies: i£ The state of agriculture being 
generally backward, commerce does not find corn, a considerable 
source of exportation; the importations, for certain grains, are 
even larger than the exportations. The vine is not cultivated 
with the care it demands. Agriculture is insignificant in its de- 
velopments; it is wanting in capital and credit. On account of 
the imperfection of internal communication, it has no market for 
its produce, and when it finds one, it is hampered by a thousand 
vexatious and injurious fiscal measures. It groans under a land- 



1. Rey, p. 53 to 55, and following. — 2. Mirabeau, vol. m, PP- 486 and 520. 



tax beyond ail reasonable proportion, and, besides, in the greater 
number of the provinces, it is weighed down under the feudal 
system, with its loans in kind and others, together with the most 
deplorable consequences, without mentioning an entangled system 
of mortgage with endless delays l ." 

" In Austria, in that fertile country placed in the centre of 
Europe, in the midst of the most civilised nations, from two-thirds 
to two pounds of sugar only are consumed annually by each 
person; that is to say, that sugar is totally unknown to the inha- 
bitants of the country, the greatest portion of the population. 
We find in this circumstance that Austria is at the bottom of the 
European scale, side by side with Russia and Turkey ; one would 
think that sugar had chosen to conform itself, with regard to her, 
to the rank she occupies in so many other respects among the 
nations of Europe. In truth, it would be in vain to find a country 
in which the masses are so ignorant, so easily led, and oppressed, 
in which the land is so completely wanting in all the advantages 
with which modern civilisation has endowed us, and in which 
money is so rare among the people. I am well aware that sugar 
is not like meat, corn, linen, and wool, an absolutely indispen- 
sable article • but it is one of those things which necessity alone 
deprives one of, and by whose presence or absence we judge whether 
a family is well or ill-off. See Ireland, compared with England ; 
there we find 4> s of sugar against 20 lbs ; Bavaria with Prussia; 
there it is 2 l/2 ,bs against 5; Italy with Holland, there it is 2 lb5 
against 14- V 

To this state of agriculture corresponds an analogous state of 
industry. Haifa century ago, Mirabeau said : " The people are in 
a state of thraldom too hard and too general, in almost all the 
provinces under the Austrian sway, for industry to be universal. 
More liberty and more light would be necessary for that. In truth, 
the shackles which impede the progress of industry in the Austrian 
states come principally from the want of light ; for ignorance, the 
lover of routine, fancies that wisdom consists in letting things alone. 
These are real calamities, to which the imperial authority should 
apply a remedy 3 . " 

In the present day, William Rey says further : " In passing 
under review the more advanced fabrics — the tissues, for instance, 
— a singular fact made its appearance; I observed more carefully, 
saw many workshops, and always with the same result; this was 



1. Bernard, p. 20. — 2. Jacquemin. — 3. Mintbcju, vol. vn, p. 358. 



197 

the fact : At Vienna, nothing is made except on designs and models 
of novelties from Paris. Poverty of invention is absolute, and 
perhaps exceeds what we know of China. It is no more possible to 
believe in a return to originality in industry where it has so com- 
pletely perished, and given way to servile imitations. 

These censures fall even upon those things of which they boast. 
s( We cannot understand the praises which are lavished upon the 
Austrian Government for undertaking the execution of the principal 
lines of railway, since this resolution was not adopted until after 
it had allowed commerce to fall into a most deplorable condition. 
The merchants are in fact much discouraged for want of credit; and 
they see nothing before their eyes but abortive enterprises such as 
the unfinished road from Gmunden to Budweis, the service upon 
which is made by horses. The enthusiasm manifested upon that 
occasion will not deceive those persons who know the spirit of the 
Austrian Government, and they will only see in it a profound ignor- 
ance of the facts 1 . " 

Education is as little advanced as industry. Austria, it must be 
admitted, invites professors from abroad, and opens schools, 
academies, and museums, but with obvious unwillingness, and 
under the pressure of the Protestant atmosphere by which she is 
enveloped. In Austria, they accept the torch of science, but it is 
behind a veil, and only because they cannot hide it under a 
bushel. 

iC Notwithstanding the splendid and expensive establishments 
for the cultivation of literature and sciences, " says Catteau, " the 
public libraries, the botanical gardens, and the university, the taste 
for knowledge is not diffused in Vienna. A censorship, notoriously 
severe, has inflicted upon the press and the book trade disadvan- 
tages which have produced the most striking effects 2 . " 

" If the importance of a people is to be estimated by its literature, 
and the celebrated men it has produced, the Austrians do not occupy 
apparently a very distinguished rank. In fact, their literature is 
next to nothing at all. The small number of writers which this 
country has produced have been imitators, or more or less judicious 
critics. This people, who are very little susceptible of enthusiasm 
for the fine arts, have found it more convenient to imitate than to 
produce. They have tried with labour and taste to know and 
appreciate books already in existence. They have thus done without 
a talent which they might have needed, and which they do not 



1. Rey, pp. 114 and 113. — 2. Catteau, yoI. i, p. 216. 



198 



seem to have received from nature; the talent which forms models 
and founds a national literature. As able critics and laborious 
scholars, the Germans occupy a distinguished rank ; it is the same 
with the Austrians, with this differ ence, that they have not attained 
the same degree of perfection ; and they have remained far below 
perfection in the higher walks of literature. The Germans have 
advanced to the conception of the great beauties of literature, 
although in the midst of their most beautiful productions we are 
always sensible of the inequality of their talent ; but the Austrians 
have not advanced so far, and nothing in their literature displays 
even the first essays of genius 1 . " 

<c If some writers in the North of Germany have been able to 
escape from the influence of despotic institutions, they owe it to the 
society in the midst of which they have found themselves placed. 
In fact, several princes of the North of Germany have endeavoured 
to make their little capitals imitations of Ancient Athens; by giving 
freedom to thought, and exercising their power moderately, they 
have prepared and perhaps given birth to that literature which is 
a part of the glory of the nation. Monuments perish, conquests are 
obliterated, but a beautiful book survives everything, and becomes 
an imperishable title of glory for ever. " 

"If we apply these general remarks to Austria, we shall understand 
more easily how it is possible that she should be still without litera- 
ture, and why the cultivation of the fine arts there has never shed 
much brilliancy. 

" There is a certain flight which literature cannot take without 
encouragement, or at least men must be borne towards the 
cultivation of letters by motives more or less powerful. Far from 
dreaming of encouraging them, the sovereigns of Austria have 
always tried to keep down every literary impulse of the nation; not 
of itself, by the way, over much inclined to such pursuits; and, in 
consequence of determining to restrain everything, they have 
finished by extinguishing all. The whole nation is content with 
the repose and comfort which it owes to the fertility of the soil, and 
to institutions tolerably wise. It knows no better, and is contented 
with the passive wellbeing of the enjoyment of which it feels assur- 
ed. None of those who form a part of the nation has ever thought 
that noble motives are needful Jo create the sacred faith, and thrill 
men with the sacred love of country. Hence it has happened that 
when any sovereign has wished to shake them out of their lethargy, 



1 . Marcel tie Serres, vol. iv, pp. 30 to 32. 



199 



these populations have not in the least understood Mai; and have 
opposed his innovations with the calmness of apathy, and the icy 
silence of indifference. How, I ask, with such elements and such 
a nation, can Austria have a national literature? If the patriotic 
sentiment of a people is* composed of the memories which great 
men have bequeathed to it, or of the admiration inspired by the 
master-pieces of the national genius, how can it exist among the 
Austrians? Who are the great men of Austria? where are the 
master-pieces produced by them ? The former are few in number, 
and the latter have no existence 1 . " 

" The want of emulation has hitherto suffocated in Austria the 
love of the fine arts, and if imagination exalts itself enough among 
us to create the hope of living by the arts in the future, something 
more positive is necessary nevertheless to the nations which love 
nothing but the realities of life. The government of Austria seems 
to wish to push equity further than is natural by treating talent and 
mediocrity equally. All minds thus remain in profound repose, 
and the calm of the senses contributes to prolong still further that 
of the soul. At what epoch will such a people awake, and when will 
they appear with glory in the literary world 2 ?" 

Such as the spiritual world is * such will be the physical world. 
11 Most of the countries, * says Mirabeau, iS under the House of 
Austria, stagnate in superstition and ignorance; nevertheless, the 
natural products are manufactured in all the provinces. There is 
nothing but the government which obstructs the factories by im- 
peding industry ; by obliging, for example, such a country to cast its 
metals into such a form, and sell them at such a place; and by sub- 
jecting industry to a thousand absurd impediments. What a 
system is that of a country in which there are not only tolls and 
customs between the country and foreigners, but also between one 
province and another; where exportation and importation are 
equally impeded ; where there is a general prohibition against all 
goods of foreign manufacture; where they burn everything that 
they seize; where the people have nowhere neither liberty nor pro- 
perty; where they prescribe to the makers the works which they 
ought to make, and where they ought to sell them 3 . * 

iC The causes which have prevented, up to the present time, the 
improvement of industry in the Austrian States, are the education, 
and the prejudices to which the people of all classes still cling, 
and certain political institutions, such as serfdom, severe corvees, 

1. Marcel de Serres, vol. iv, pp. 70 to 75. — 2. Hem, p. 85. — 3. Mirabean,vol. vn. p. 378. 



200 



impediments to commerce, and taxes upon the exportation of mer- 
chandise, and the productions of the t country. ' I speak/ says 
M. Hermann, ' as a patriot who suffers when he sees all around his 
country the arts and sciences flourishing, and already arrived 
almost at perfection, in many lands destitute of the natural advan- 
tages of Austria ; and that in a great part of the monarchy ignorance 
and prejudices oppose a thousand obstacles to the wisest measures, 
and that industry should he almost extinct in the remote districts 
and provinces 1 . 

The preceding applies to the Austrian Empire as a whole; hut 
this vast state, composed of parts related to each other, must be studied 
in each of them. They are all Catholic, and this is enough for our 
purpose; it is useful to see how Catholicism bears fruits of the same 
savour, even when grafted upon different nations. 

Let. us start from the capital as from a centre: i£ Little familiar 
with good society, the young men of Vienna appear out of place in 
it, or without amiability. Without employment, and very often 
ill-educated, their way of life is even still more futile than those of 
the lightest of the women; gaming and hunting are their only 
resources; and insipid conversations are the only means left them 
to render supportable to other people the weight of their useiessness. 
These creatures, as weary as wearisome, are more common at 
Vienna than anywhere else. Literature is so little honoured in 
that capital, and consequently so little cultivated, that it never 
becomes a serious occupation except to a small number of men. 
Men of science and letters form there a class apart, with little com- 
munication with the fashionable world. The results are that 
the former are deficient in grace and ease, and the latter boast 
of their ignorance, or, which is almost the same thing, of their stu- 
pidity 2 . " 

Let us enter a neighbouring province: 

(e In Lower Carinthia the peasant must work three or four days 
a-week for his lord, who takes, besides, a half of the harvest. 
However accustomed we may be to see man endure every thing, it 
is still difficult to conceive how he can endure such sufferings, 
without crushing a thousand times such oppressive tyrants 3 . " 

" M. Campe, a writer worthy of credit, assures us that he has 
never seen numbers of beggars approaching those which he met in 
crossing the Brisgau, in the environs of the four frontier towns. 
You cannot, he says, form an idea of it. When the Emperor crosses 

1. Mirabean, vol. vn, p. 414. — 2. Marcel de Serres, vol. v, p. 151. — 3. Miraboau, 
vol. vn, p. 259. 



201 



these countries, great pains are taken to send them away, that at 
least there may be presented to the eyes of the monarch an appear- 
ance of prosperity *. " 

" The people of Illyria are, in general, governed absolutely by 
their clergy. They are of the Greek rite, although not united ; they 
are kept in the densest ignorance, says the author of a memoir, who 
was a long time physician to a Greek bishop in Croatia, to facilitate 
Catholic proselytism, as if it were not necessary to make men wen, 
prior to making them orthodox. It is by educating the clergy that 
it is necessary to commence the civilisation of these populations. 
The government has often been urged to consent to the establish- 
ment of schools for the clergy; but, convinced that their ignorance 
is favourable to the introduction of Catholicism into the country, 
the government has constantly refused. We might here agitate 
the question, if the maintenance of superstition and barbarism 
is not a feature of the profound policy of the House of Austria, 
since it is more than probable that these populations, by civilising 
and instructing themselves, would become less fit for the kind 
of war which they wage in such a superior manner; but we shall 
regard this question as too atrocious to be discussed. To brutify a 
part of the human species to make them more perfect beasts of 
prey, would be one of the most frightful crimes of lesc-humanite, 
or treason against humanity 2 . 31 

" The soil of Hungary is cultivated without intelligence and 
without care. Nothing is wanting to enable this country to take 
the first rank among the most favoured countries of Europe, except 
a more enlightened direction of its rural economy. It would seem 
that Hungary, which had been so favourably treated by nature, 
ought to be the richest and the most beautiful country in the world. 
But it is nothing in the world, and many causes combine to prevent 
its becoming anything in it. 

" The indolence, the ignorance, and the carelessness of the inha- 
bitants drive away the happiness which offers itself. The earth is 
badly cultivated; the stagnant waters exhale, during summer, 
malignant miasms, which engender destructive maladies among 
men and animals. Education might elevate the lower classes 
towards better habits, but this education is almost absolutely want- 
ing; dreaded perhaps by the classes who could spread it, the want 
is not felt by those to whom it would be most useful V 

" Assuredly the kingdom of Hungary is admirably endowed by 

1. Mirabeao, vol. vtr, p. 269. — 2. Idem, pp. 298 to 300, — 3. DUaussez, vol. if, pp. 191 
to 195. 



202 



nature, the territory is nearly everywhere of a rare fertility, but, 
unfortunately, agriculture and industry are there in their infancy. 
Man has not undertaken anything as yet to draw forth the riches of 
the soil, which await the hand of the skilful and laborious workman, 
and enterprising capitalists who shall undertake to extract them, 
and turn them to profit 1 . " 

Such is the general state of the country ; but an exception is 
mentioned; and we shall see that it is to the profit of another 
principle than that of Catholicism. The fact which we have shown 
in Ireland is produced in Germany, that is to say, that in the same 
circumstances of climate and administration, the Protestant popula- 
tions have, over the Catholic populations with which they are 
mingled, an incontestable superiority. 

" In Hungary are found Germans called Saxons by the Magyars ; 
they have been drawn from the North of Germany by the ancient 
kings to teach agriculture, work the mines, and build castles; they 
enjoy certain privileges, and are Lutherans 2 . *' 

The effects of this Protestant colonisation have been such as are 
seen generally; but they are all the more remarkable here, that 
they shew themselves beside the Catholic populations, at ho still 
remain inferior to these industrious foreigners. 

w Civilisation, in Hungary, owes its most marked progress to 
Germans. They make more than half the population in the towns 
worthy of the name, and where the arts and skilled trades are 
carried on. Agriculture has also profited from the residence of the 
Germans : in cultivating the same land as the Magyars and the 
Wallachians, they always derive from it superior maize, or tobacco, 
or fuller corn, less soiled with earth and tares, and for which a 
higher price will be given. This is so true, that in the Banat they 
speak of German corn and Hungarian corn as if they were two 
different kinds of grain. The German has always had a feeling of 
his superiority over the disorderly and debt-ridden Hungarian 
nobility 3 . " 

But let us return to the Catholic populations and their ignorance : 
" In the elevated Cantons of the Tyrol, the peasants believe in good 
and evil sprites. The village maidens scarcely dare to go out in the 
twilight, or after the time of vespers, for fear of falling into some 
trap laid for them by infernal spirits. There is nothing, not e^ven 
the murmur produced by the fresh evening breeze, which their 
exalted imaginations does not believe to be an announcement of 



1. Desprez, vol. i, p. 251. — 2. Rougemont, p. 373. — 3. Rey, pp. 103, 104. 



203 



the presence of ghosts. The clouds which collect together before 
a storm, appear equally to them to be malignant divinities coming 
into collision. Thus, their superstitions dreams animate all nature. 
To protect themselves from these pretended sprites, many Tyrolese, 
and even some of the women, carve in their own flesh, by pricking 
with needles, and rubbing gunpowder into the holes, figures of 
Christ or of saints, and thus think themselves preserved for 
ever l J 3 

Does this religious faith purify the morals? we may judge: 
u The very young girls of Voralberg (Tyrol) wear red sleeves, until 
about their fifteenth year, when they change them for black. 
A custom which is rigorously kept forbids the young men from mak- 
ing any attempts against the virtue of the girls with red sleeves ; 
another custom, which they say does not admit of any more 
exceptions, authorises the most entire liberty in regard to those with 
the black sleeves. The unfortunate girl who has committed a fault 
is forced by her companions to substitute, for the ribbon knots and 
long gold or silver pin which keeps up her hair, a very little white 
cap, which she is obliged to wear. I have met, in my journies, a 
considerable number of white caps, and have been assured that I 
might have counted a much greater number, if, from the time that 
they perceive a change of head-dress inevitable, the families did not 
take means to prevent the shame, which nevertheless has no 
influence on the future estimation of the woman who has submitted 
to it. 

" The first time that I entered into an inn to obtain the means 
of satisfying my hunger, which a long and painful road had made 
very exacting, they told me I might partake of the family meal. I 
was about to decline this honour, when my guide warned me that 
by doing so I should be guilty of a great incivility; and that, besides, 
the man who offered me this kind of politeness was an important 
personage, the chief magistrate of the place. 1 then resigned myself. 
I asked myself how they could take what was served to eat while 
the table was without plates. The host did not leave me long in 
uncertainty ; he took one of the spoons, which were thrown in a 
heap upon the table, plunged it into the soup tureen, carried it to 
his mouth, and, leaning on the left elbow, while his right hand 
was inaction, continued this exercise; every body imitated him, and 
myself like the rest, in spite of my repugnance. I remarked that 
those of the guests who piqued themselves on their good manners 



1. Marcel de Serres, vol. vi, p. 88, 



204 



advanced the left hand, at the same time as the right, to catch what 
fell from the spoon before it reached the table-cloth V 

"Notwithstanding the innumerable resources which the ferti- 
lity of the soil, the working of the mines and the woods, and the 
different manufactures created since the last century, present to 
the inhabitants of Bohemia, the country is not very flourishing. 
The villagers are reduced to the condition of serfs; and discou- 
ragement and apathy, the necessary fruits of slavery, always keep 
up in Bohemia a multitude of beggars and vagabonds. Such is 
the state of degradation of these poor creatures : the man is 
clothed in rags, and covered with a bad hairy cap ; a stick helps to 
keep him up in a reckless attitude ; he walks with bare feet, and he 
remains steeped in sloth, until an imperious necessity compels 
him to work V' 

" In Dalmatia, there are not seven in twenty of the children 
who go to school; in lllyria not one-half; and in Gallicia not 
eighteen in twenty. The country people in Hungary remain 
buried in the deepest ignorance 3 ." 

" Industry is not proportionate to the richness of the soil, and 
the abundance of raw materials. Agriculture and the rearing 
of cattle are not well understood, except in the districts inhabited 
by the Germans ( the author thus designates the Protestant 
district) V 

" In Gallicia, the industrial class is still in its infancy, the nobi- 
lity uneducated, and the serfs ignorant and lazy V 

" The Zingarians, those even who have abandoned vagabond- 
age and become Austrian peasants, most frequently do not possess 
even the cabin and the rags of the subject. They live under the 
earth, in holes covered with straw or faggots and clay, and shut by 
doors made of willows. Sometimes, near a great road, while you 
are looking for some new horizon, suddenly a few paces off, and at 
the side of a rock, human heads appear like spectres coming out 
of dilapidated tombs. These are Zingarian peasants attracted by the 
noise of your steps, and who come to ask charity. In these in- 
fected holes, children of both sexes are brought up almost to the 
age of puberty entirely naked, and with more than primitive liberty. 
To be just, I cannot throw upon the legislation and the proprietors 
all the responsibility of such destitution ; but, because generous 
spirits have lost their labour in misdirected attempts at reforma- 
tion, it does not follow that the Transylvanian nobles have ac- 



1. D'Haussez, vol. i, pp. 355 to 358. — 2. Marcel de Serres, vol. v, p. 69. — 3. Rougemont, 

p. 348.-4. Idem, p. 349. ~ 5. Idem, p. 367. 



205 



quired the right, in regard to these unhappy populations, to erect 
contempt and cruelty into a system. 

"The peasants merit still less to he treated with this culpable 
indifference , as they are the noblest people in the principality. 
Those of Transylvania are not laborious, because up to the present 
time they have not been free. Their love of repose has no other 
cause. When refusing them the means of quitting their social 
apathy, the proprietors have been influenced no doubt by the pro- 
spect of the clangers by which they might be menaced by the deve- 
lopment of nationality. 

" In the two kingdoms of Hungary and Croatia, misery does not 
present the hideous aspect, the frightful nakedness, which it dis- 
plays in Transylvania. However, it is necessary that the material 
condition of the country should be made what it might be under 
milder laws and government. Hungary is a generous land. The 
soil yields everything demanded of it; unfortunately, the means of 
carriage and transport are either impossible, or extremely dear. 
Very often the bridges are in ruins, and it is dangerous to cross by 
them in the night. In the villages, and sometimes in certain inland 
towns, the streets are not better kept. It sometimes happens that 
we are obliged to take a horse to get along them % . " 

" The part of Croatia situated beyond St. Georges is that where 
the absence of civilisation is most shockingly remarkable. From 
the ferocious air of the inhabitants, from their dress, which is com- 
posed of square bits of cotton or coarse stuff, and a mantle of sheep- 
skin, from the nakedness of different parts of their bodies, from the 
sourness of their manners, from the form of their houses, we might 
believe ourselves amidst the savannas of Canada, or on the banks 
of some river of New Holland 2 . " 

" The Wallachians, who have established their residences in 
the mountains of Siebenbourg, may be considered as the European 
nation among whom civilisation is least advanced. Deprived of 
activity and industry, they lead a reckless life, and know no other 
occupation than that of keeping their flocks. There are few of 
them who will take the trouble of cultivating the earth, and these 
only when forced by extreme necessity. The Wallachians are 
distrustful and vindictive, and cordially hate all other nations. 
Drunkenness and the basest inclinations proceed from their bad edu- 
cation and the examples of the r forefathers. They allow their 
beards and hair to grow, which present a most disgusting appear- 



1. Desprcz, vol. i, pp. 178 to 182. — 2. D'flaussez, vol. n, p. 174. 



206 



ance ; and they do not take the trouble to tie them, much less to comb 
them. Their whole dress consists of a coarse shirt, fastened round 
the waist by a leather belt, garnished with several buttons, on 
which are suspended their knives, their forks, and their short 

sabres K " 

If it is observed to us that it is not the Austrian government 
which has fashioned all these populations, we shall answer, no 
more is it the government which we accuse, but the primary 
cause which has formed these different nations, and even the 
government itself — we mean Roman Catholicism. Moreover, there 
is a creation which belongs entirely to this government; let it be 
judged, ff Has Austrian society profited by the creation of the 
military colonies? is the population happy which lives in subjec- 
tion to the regime of that establishment? Can we hope for it any 
progress or civilisation, or any amelioration of its lot? A negative 
answer it would appear ought to be made to each of these questions, 
when we consider the time which has passed since the formation 
of these establishments, the state of the population of which they 
are composed, and the country in which they exist. 

(( Eighty years have passed over the work of the genius of 
Maria Theresa. There is always the same brutality, the same im- 
morality, the same ignorance of the most essential things, the 
same disdain for the comforts of life, and the same incapacity for 
procuring them. From so many efforts, and so much perse- 
verance, all the results are some thousands more of coarse 
creatures, some cabins to shelter them, and some cultivated 
fields to nourish them. As for any real amelioration in the 
physical and moral state of the population, anything superior 
or even mediocre cannot be cited. I do not think that there 
exists in all Europe a population more backward in civilisation or 
intelligence than those of this country. The most simple cir- 
cumstance embarrasses and stops individuals whose position and 
supposed education ought to make us believe them to be more in- 
telligent ; their only means is the brutal and uncontrolled exer- 
cise of an authority which extends to everything. It cannot be 
otherwise in a state of things which transmits its principle of 
stagnation to the society which it rules. A similar organisation 
cannot reproduce anything, but that which has created itself. 
Soldiers and not citizens ; creatures condemned not to move except 
to the sound of the drum, to offer their backs to the lash of the 



1. Marcel de Serres, vol. m, p. 32. 



207 



corporal, and, wk&a war has spared them , to die upon the spot 
where they have lived, the lives of brutes, and almost those of 
vegetables. No progress can therefore be expected from society 
thus organised ; these institutions have no other results than to 
extract from lands, previously sterile, the subsistence of a certain 
number of individuals, whose whole aptitudes, and only destiny, 
are confined to killing and being killed, and to create other indivi- 
duals to succeed them, stupid, miserable, and enslaved, like them- 
selves, and accepting life upon the same conditions. It was not 
worth while to do so much to go so far, and not go any farther l f 

What we have said of Austria may be said of the other Catholic 
countries of Germany, and especially of Bavaria. A few short 
quotations will suffice to estimate the resemblance of the two 
nations. 

First of all, let us hear Mirabeau. If the condition he describes is 
not exactly that of our times, it is at least contemporary with the 
condition of Prussia, of which the same author will inform us farther 
on, and this is enough for our comparison. More recent documents 
will follow elsewhere the testimony of Mirabeau : cc Whence comes 
the condition of the commerce of Bavaria?" asks the illustrious 
orator. "The primary cause is found in the ignorance into which all 
classes of the people are plunged. We are assured that one-third 
of the people of Bavaria do not know how to read. A peasant who 
knows how to read is there a rare being. There is often only one 
school for a whole bailiwick, and moreover the schoolmasters are 
ignorant and ill-paid. The priests govern the whole nation, and 
they wish this state of things to last, as it is advantageous to them : 
they increase superstition all they can, and this superstition is 
destructive of every kind of industry. The infinite numbers of 
fetes, pilgrimages, and processions keep up idleness and misery. 
The number of government stipendiaries are enormous, and also 
the number of overseers in the country, who, being as ignorant as 
they are rapacious, torment the peasants in the most cruel fashion. 
To form an idea of the oppressions which the unhappy cultivator 
has to support, it will suffice to know that when he takes possession 
of a property of the value of about 4,000 he pays in fees to 
the overseers of the government 1,216 /., without counting the 
expenses of the commission and of the inventory. How can he 
preserve the idea of escaping from his miserable condition ? thus 
he cares for nothing but to consume the fruits which a fertile soil 



1. D'Haussez, t. it, pp. 178 to 181. 



208 

renders him. without thinking of securing the permanent improve- 
ment of his condition. Another very sad consequence of this state 
of things is, that there is no country in all Germany where crimes 
are so frequent, and the wheel and the gibbet so active as in Bavaria. 
It is said that the great roads form in this respect an atrocious 
spectacle for sensitive travellers, as they are bordered on both sides 
by gibbets, as other roads are by useful trees. This is atrocious, no 
doubt, but it does not the less show the excess of evil which has 
been the cause of it. We feel that in such a situation it need not 
be asked if there is any commerce in Bavaria. How can a country, 
although endowed with a fertile soil, be worth a crown in money, 
while oppressed by ecclesiastical and secular power, without ma- 
nufacturing industry, without commerce, and obliged to derive the 
satisfaction of nearly all its wants from the works of foreigners? 

" It is not that Bavaria might not be infinitely more prosperous. 
Let them deliver it from a clergy who possess nearly one-third of 
the revenue of the country, and still more from the ignorance in 
which this clergy holds it; let them relieve it from the immense 
pressure of the holydays, which cause the working classes to lose 
such an infinitude of time; let them allow intelligence to penetrate 
into it, which would be followed by an improved agriculture ; let 
them destroy the immense crowd of stipendiaries, and especially the 
overseers of the government, who oppress the cultivator at will; 
and soon the population will increase, and the country attain all the 
wealth that nature has destined it to 1 . " 

"The mendicant friars are one of the small plagues of Catholic 
countries. We remember to have read in a little German work, 
entitled, Voyages dans le cercle de Baviere, 1784, that they overran 
Bavaria like a sort of holy constabulary; laying peasauts, shopkeepers, 
and artisans under contribution because gentlemen will not suffer 
them to enter into their mansions', and keep them aloof as if they 
were a sort of stinking and rapacious vermin 2 . " 

"The horrible persecutions suffered by the members of the so- 
ciety to maintain and diffuse information in Bavaria still draw tears 
from the eyes of all enlightened and sensible men in Germany, and 
will be the eternal shame of the present government in Bavaria. " 

" The superstitious party triumphs there completely at present, 
and of course there is no occasion to say that the education of the 
people and even of persons of rank is in the most miserable condi- 
tion. The University of Ingoldstadt is entirely in the hands of ex- 



1. Mirabeau, vol. vm, pp. 33G to 33S. — -2. idem, p. 367. 



209 

Jesuits, and of all those men whose unique object is to increase 
ignorance and barbarism. In Bavaria, the colleges are workshops, 
in which they mutilate minds by teaching them nothing except 
barbarous Latin and brutilising theology. The schools of the 
people are, if possible, in a still more deplorable state. They are too 
few in number, and in consequence of the ignorance of the clergy 
and the schoolmasters the few there are do more harm than good. 
Tt is owing, apparently, to the ignorance of the people that an 
enormous quantity of crimes are committed in Bavaria. 

" The monks themselves are guilty of strange atrocities, and if 
justice examines the facts and discovers them, the ecclesiastical 
power, by superior orders, withdraws the criminals from secular 
punishment. 

"M. Nicolai assures us that in 1781, eighteen executions took place 
in Munich, and that in 1 775 it was a common thing to have two or 
three a-week. From whatever cause it may be, the ignorance of 
the clergy, and hence for the best of all reasons that of all classes of 
the people whom the clergy ought to. instruct, is incredible 1 . " 

This description, written in the end of the last century, compared 
with one of our own day, will have the advantage of proving what 
indeed Catholicism boasts of, that under her rule people do not 
change : " The Bavarians/' says M. Marcel de Serres, " seem much 
attached to the faith of their forefathers; the people, naturally less 
informed, appear to be more religious than educated persons, if we 
regard in religion only its observances. They owe to their great 
love for religious observances the taint of superstition from which, 
they are not yet free. Their superstition is confined generally to 
the belief in good and evil spirits, and that these last trouble good 
order. The peasants even think that these spirits appear upon 
the earth in certain cases either to increase the ailments of their 
bodies, or to destroy the fruits of their labour. Almost all, and 
especially the inhabitants of the mountains, equally believe that the 
dead reappear after a certain time, and thus there is not a village 
nor a hamlet in which they do not narrate adventures with ghosts 
each more marvellous than the other. Here, it is a husband who 
has come back to devour his widow while she was giving herself 
up to amorous pleasures. There, it is a cure who has been seen 
reproaching young people for their indecent conduct; and farther 
on it is a miser who has seen a frightful spectre when about to count 
his gold. There is nothing which their imaginations does not 

1. Mirabeau, vol. vm, pp. 375 to 377. 

ii 



210 



This fact is acknowledged, too, by one of the writers whose 
views are most hostile to Protestantism. M. Rubichon confesses 
ie that a great number of French Protestants are at the head of our 
manufactures and of our commerce; they are, therefore, richer 
than the same number of French Roman Catholics *.* 

No one who has perused the articles published by the Revue des 
Deux Mondes on the subject of Protestant Missions will accuse that 
periodical of partiality for the Protestants; well, in its number for 
October 15, 1853, Ave find the following paragraph relating to the 
point under discussion : — 

" The development of education varies a little at Mazamet, accord- 
ing to the different religions. Out of J 0,000 inhabitants, about 
4,000 belong to the Reformed creed. All the master manufacturers, 
except one, are Protestants, whilst the majority of the workmen are 
Catholics. There is less instruction amongst these than in the in- 
dustrious Protestant families. The latter, being in better circum- 
stances than the former, have been enabled to devote more care to 
education 2 . y> 

The same might be said of Nismes, Marseilles, Lyons, and Bor- 
deaux; but as we cannot enter into details such as the above for all 
the cities in France, we shall limit ourselves to the significant do- 
cuments we have given respecting Paris : documents open to inspec- 
tion to any one who may feel inclined to verify our statements. 

Our last quotation connects the subject of intellectual culture 
with that of material prosperity; let us, then, go on to the second 
point we have to examine : 

Ixtellectual Gulture. — Here our sources of information are 
not less precise; they will have, moreover, the advantage of render- 
ing the truth in some manner visible and tangible. 

Although scattered over the length and breadth of France, the 
Protestants may be subdivided into two distinct and pretty consi- 
derable groups. Those belonging to the Lutheran Church, in 
Alsace; those professing the Reformed faith, in the Gard, and the 
neighbouring departments, the Drome, the Ardeche, and the He- 
rault. Alsace is not altogether Protestant, no doubt , but there the 
Protestants are most numerous, and are thus more likely to modify 
educational statistics. We say the same of Languedoc. Impos- 

1. faction du Ckrgi dans tea Sociilcs Slo&ernes, by RilbicllOll, — 2. It WOUld be eiTOlieOUS lO 

reckon up for France the children attending' Protestant schools, because we rnust take imo 
consideration the pupils of mixed schools. This is, however, what the Protestant Almanack has 
done, so that the editor's result, in 1844, for the whole kingdom is quite contrary to the one 
he obtained in 1842 for the department of the Gard. Such statements may serve as a text fo" 
declamatory exhortations, but they can give no support -to the cause of truth. 



211 



sible, as we find it, to make a correct division in both these pro- 
vinces, if we consider them as Protestants, it will be noticed that 
the error is quite to the advantage of Catholicism. For, if the 
exclusively Catholic departments were more enlightened than the 
mixed ones, we might presume that the superiority proceeds from 
the Popish faith; but, should the reverse be the case, the superiority 
of the mixed departments must come from the Protestant element 
they contain; so that, in considering them as exclusively Protest- 
ants, our want of correctness is a real profit for the Catholic cause. 

According to Mr. Schnitzler, the six departments which supply 
the primary schools 1 with the greatest number of pupils are the 
Meurlhe, Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, Haute-Saone, Vosges, and 
the Moselle. The very six departments w 7 hich comprise the ma- 
jority of the Alsace Lutheran!' 

The same author gives as the six departments numbering the 
smallest amount of pupils : the Allier, Indre-et-Loire, Upper 
Vienne 2 , Morbihan, Correze, and the C6tes-du-Nord. That is to 
say, those containing the most exclusively Catholic populations, and 
the most zealous Catholics ! 

But at what distance are both extremes from each other ? 

On the Protestant side we find 1 pupil for every 6 inhabitants. 
On the Catholic side we find 1 — 25 3 — 

The contrast can be rendered visible to the reader by a reference 
to Baron Charles Dupin's figurative map of primary instruction in 
France. On this map each department is shaded with darker 
and lighter tints, according to the greater or smaller degree of 
ignorance; a number shews, besides, how many persons must be 
reckoned for one w 7 ho knows how to read ; so that the higher the 
number, the deeper the ignorance. What we purpose doing now 
will be to copy exactly from Baron Dupin's chart the departments 
we have just been alluding to. The reader must compare for 
himself. Our reproductions are facsimiles. We have even left 
the verso of each page quite clear, in order to avoid increasing the 
darkness of the shading. 

1. Ecoles primaires, corresponding to our national schools in England. — 2. The Protestant 
churches and schools opened in this department are of more recent date than Schnitzler's 
statistics. — 3. Schnitzler, vol. n, pp. 343, 346: The ahove numbers differ from those of 
M. Du pin, inasmuch as the latter concern only male pupils; besides, the dates do not cor- 
respond. 



sleep, praise to their subjects the Austrian populations as examples 
and models : hence the pretty tales told to put these great infants 
to sleep about the perfect happiness and idyllic contentment of these 
populations. But these times are gone. In Austria, as elsewhere, 
the wants of the age, wants of an elevated order, and such as are felt 
by an intelligence which has begun to understand itself, have claim- 
ed their rights. An apathetic indifference to public affairs, a com- 
plete carelessness of the progress of time and of humanity, cannot 
subsist in this country any more than in any other in Europe. 
Nothing has as yet been seen having the remotest resemblance to 
the birth of an Austrian national sentiment, of a public spirit which 
embraces the State as a whole. This could not be otherwise, as the 
government has itself neglected to give to these sentiments an 
impulse and a rallying point. It would not call to life the forces 
which it believed to be buried in annihilation, and they have 
therefore turned away from it. At the point at which we have 
arrived, there may still be, although it may be doubted, the means of 
arresting this decomposition; but if the times in which we live are 
not skillfully turned to profit, the moment is not far distant in which 
four great and armed nationalities will be seen assuming hostile 
attitudes to each other, and having nothing in common except 
aversion and hatred against the government, if the latter does not 
give any heed to the demands always increasing, and always more 
pressing, which are addressed to it. The fatal crisis of this discon- 
tent cannot be far off, and its results are not doubtful. 

" Already a total absence of affection and interest for the Govern- 
ment is observed everywhere in Austria; nowhere is the feeling 
of union found which in other countries makes the citizens like 
so many brothers ; and the painful impression produced by this 
observation becomes all the stronger when we compare this apa- 
thetic disregard for the government with the lively, active, and 
always vigilant interest which without intermission attaches itself 
to the material and intellectual wants of the province or of the 
race. Another and a still graver symptom is the want of confi- 
dence in the future which distresses the inhabitant of the Austrian 
Empire, without his being able to explain it to himself; everybody 
in this country seems to be a prey to the sinister presentiment that 
the present state of things cannot last ; that great changes are about to 
take place; that the policy of the government is only palliative, and 
that it only tends to prolong the actual situation, and save the 
present moment without caring for what is to come after it *. " 

1. Be I'Autriehe ct cle son c.vcnir, vol. I, pp. 19 to 24. 



213 

" Meanwhile, the spirit has left the old governmental machine 
of Austria. A pernicious centralisation, a deplorable bureau- 
cracy, has annihilated these venerable institutions, the Estates are 
without force, and, what is worse, without consideration. Mere 
shadows of national representation, they are every year exposed 
to the eyes of the multitude to amuse them at the expense of de- 
puties, all of whose rights resolve themselves into one, that of 
wearing a certain uniform! and any attempt on their part to do 
anything more would be a crime ! 

" At the commencement of this century, shortly after the great 
struggle of nations, and during a dearth which killed by famine 
and misery thousands of men, the Estates of a province dared to lay 
before the throne a respectful remonstrance, and solicit from the 
Emperor a temporary diminution of taxes. The result of this 
proceeding was the most complete disgrace for the province and the 
Estates ; and this disgrace lasted until after the death of the Em- 
peror Francis. They had permitted themselves to usurp a sort of 
constitutional right of petition, and it was this which excited the 
wrath of the master 4 . " 

" The principal and almost the only functions of the Estates are 
to cause the taxes to be collected and thrown into the government 
treasury. That in such a situation they should be destitute of all 
moral credit, and every kind of importance in the eyes of the 
people, is quite right, and a matter of course. 

"Every extraordinary movement which happens unforeseen, be 
it good or bad, is foreign to Austria. Everything is there regulated 
and measured beforehand by the iron hand of habit. Everything 
moves within limits which it cannot quit neither by the most daring 
ambition, nor the most powerful influence . They might write upon 
the cradle of every Austrian who is born the history of his future 
destinies. Austria is the classic land of routine — of the customs 
which are observed to-day, because they were observed yesterday. 

ee The Austrian gentleman, deprived of all political importance, 
and imprisoned in a formalism which excluded all free develop- 
ment of the mind, and still more all profitable, practical activity, 
cannot preserve any other ambition than that of dragging on his 
life in a monotonous garrison, or of rolling out of one office into 
anolher without object, without tendency and without inner life, 
and curbing his mind beneath the miserable trifles which compose 
administrative routine. When old, he will become governor or 



1. De I'Antriche et de son avenir, vol. I, pp. 38 to 39. 



214 



president, and will descend to the tomb conscious that he has not, 
during his long life of a polype, done a single useful, influential, 
or beneficent action which he can call his own, and leave with le- 
gitimate pride as an inheritance to his children. The thing which 
alone possesses force and power in Austria, is habit, custom, the 
daily course of routine. There is no reasonable indemnity for such 
a shabby existence, for this absence of all spiritual action; this life- 
long winter sleep, which does not receive from all the great vital 
questions which agitate our age anything but a far-off echo, like a 
confused dream, or a doubtful vibration. An intellectual suicide 
so blameable could not appear supportable except to one whose 
mind had been early confined within narrow limits, and who has 
not learned any other object than that of securing his daily bread. 
All the intelligent classes in Austria suffer from this painful and 
false position, and the nobility feel it most profoundly and most 
severely. When all other classes deveiope their activity, theirs is 
without object; being shut out from commerce by what may be a 
prejudice, but which is not on that account the less powerful! The 
absence of social and public life, and of publicity, takes from them 
all independent and personal activity, and they are reduced to the 
poor and ungrate fill pursuits which the favour of the most mecha- 
nical of all governments permits to its friends. 

" Every official at his commencement must pass, in all, sixteen 
years in his noviciate : they do not take the least notice of the dif- 
ferences of talents, or the different doses of the sciences, with which 
they may be provided. The poor infant is thus scarcely born before 
he ought to put himself on the wheel of the great machine which 
will henceforth carry him along to his last moment in the continued 
movement which it describes. Not a moment is allowed to this 
human being, during his whole life, to enjoy his liberty or take his 
breath; not a moment in which he might collect himself in the 
midst of the stupifying rotation and ask himself, why he is placed 
in that machine? if it is worth such a great sacrifice? and Hit 
exists for his sake, or he for its sake ? 

" Sixteen years ! and sixteen years of infancy and of youth ! 
what a treasure of time and of faculties given to the State! what 
things might be learned in these sixteen years, the most important 
and the most decisive of the human life! How many fruitful 
seeds might have been thrown over this virgin soil ! But, alas ! 
the educational establishments of Austria do not comprehend the 
importance of their mission, and the possibility of fulfilling them. 
An unhappy pedantry, a shameful negligence of what is most im- 



245 

portant to the man and the citizen, dwarfs the young minds, im- 
pressing on them a restricted and unintelligent direction, turning 
aside their flight from every superior object, guiding them towards 
the vulgar road, and making them desire only their pitiful daily 
bread. There is no liberty of discussion or of thought. They have 
an educational book prescribed for each science, generally the true 
work of a pedant, and they are never allowed to go from it even by 
verbal commentaries. There is no social intercourse, or tie of the 
affections or of the soul between the professors and the scholars; 
there is nothing between them except the fear which the pupil 
has of an unfavourable report. They strengthen the memories of 
the pupils at the expense of their minds, by filling their heads 
with such a mass of useless and inapplicable things that there is no 
room left for thought. Their character and their moral develop- 
ment are entirely set aside, or limited to giving them some un- 
digested religious instruction. Out of school, the life of the pupils 
is rendered painful by a contemptible and pedantic oversight, the 
lofty object of which manifests itself in a ridiculous war against 
smoking, sticks, and moustaches. 

" Hence, very few auditors are seen in the educational establish- 
ments of Austria who are attracted there by the love of science. 
Nearly all regard their studies as a necessary evil; the only means 
of obtaining an office, or rather a salary — that only and grand 
object of the pupils, in their most golden dreams. To reach this 
object, they drag themselves painfully through the prescribed 
years, they support patiently the meagre lessons of the professor, 
and they reach with pleasure the end of a pleasureless career, and 
enter into another which is not less punctiliously regulated, nor 
less destitute of enjoyments. 

<c From his most tender youth, the Austrian has his spirit con- 
fined as in a fold; he has been brought up with one idea, and for 
one sole object, namely, to procure his daily bread. A stranger to 
every real interest, and to every elevated view, he has not from his 
earliest years seen anything but one winding, dull, and obscure path, 
which he has not chosen for the object to which it leads,nor for 
its noble destination, but only for the bread which he finds on it. 

" It may be that there are other countries in which scientific 
education is not superior to that of Austria; but in these countries 
life outside the school has more liberty, and fewer impediments. 
Juvenile action, the development of ideas, is not so confined; there 
is none of that unreasonable and calculated pedantry which tends 
to suffocate liberty and spiritual life. The time of study passed, 



216 



the young man enjoys an interval of fall and absolute leisure. 
He can then disembarrass himself of the chain which a life of rou- 
tine has riveted around him. He can, in the consciousness of his 
liberty, consider the course he would like best. He will not give 
way to a necessity which is often imaginary, and will not submit 
passively to the immediate consequences of the present. This short 
and only moment of liberty is forbidden to the future Austrian 
functionary. Hence it would be difficult to find a class so full of 
lost and broken existences, of souls so tormented by discontent, as 
that of the Austrian functionaries. In fact, most of them have 
adopted their trade without a taste or inward vocation for it, and 
even many of them with marked repugnance. 

" If the past presents itself to them deprived of enjoyment, the 
perspective of the future is not less unprovided with every excite- 
ment to activity. For them, the weak thread of life unrols itself 
with an excessive slowness. The day of advancement arrives, 
without anything being able to accelerate or retard it a single 
hour. No mark of distinction, no gratitude, no public encourage- 
ment comes to recompense extraordinary efforts, or a capacity 
a little superior to mediocrity. 

" The Austrian administration leaves to the communes so little 
liberty of action, that they cannot nominate any of their func- 
tionaries, not even their clerks, attornies, etc.; the nomination and 
dismissal of these subaltern employes is entirely at the mercy of 
the government, which is not in the least obliged to make known 
the motive of its acts. The administration of the expenses and 
receipts of the commune , like that of the common funds, is placed 
under the special inspection of the government of the State. No 
meeting for any object can take place without the permission of 
the authorities, nor without their presence, and these restrictions 
apply not only to rural communes, but also to towns, whatever 
may be their extent or their importance. 

" When a few centuries hence our descendants shall study the 
institutions of their ancestors, when they shall see how the manage- 
ment of affairs the most important to individuals, and which affect 
them the most, were forbidden to the only persons who were 
directly interested in them, when they shall know that their ma- 
nagement was confided to indifferent strangers, they will doubt the 
existence of such a state of things, and will be astonished at the 
stupidity of the governments and the good-nature of the governed. 

i( It is easy to understand what must be the influence of judicial 
functionaries whose power is neither limited by the institution of 



the jury, nor by the publicity of their proceedings, and who decide 
upon the property as upon the lives of the citizens. An influence 
not less great, and perhaps not less odious, is that of the officers of 
the Exchequer and the Excise, who are in constant contact with the 
people, and who have the right to control their daily income, and 
its consumption. The people ought to see in the functionaries 
auxiliaries to their efforts towards progress and improvement; the 
guides, in fact, of their knowledge and intelligence; they ought to 
recognise in them the will to do good, a sympathy for it, and, in 
a word, the opposite of what they now see in them. The anti- 
pathy of the Austrian people for the officials is thus all the 
stronger, that they know they have they right to make complaints 
against them, and that instead of hastening to do justice, they have 
a want of all interest in it, and an indifference without limits in 
regard to the men out of whose ranks they have nevertheless 
themselves risen l . " 

" The deficit always returns in a regular manner in the Austrian 
administration. Where does such a state of the finances lead? The 
debt of the State, which augments every year, absorbs in a conti- 
nually increasing proportion the public revenue, and the whole admi- 
nistration is annually becoming more costly and more complicated. 
The number of officials, wmich is augmenting incessantly, presents a 
frightful perspective. In such a situation, the only remedy for the 
disorder of the finances is a complete change of the present system V 

" The severity of the fiscal measures has now become vexatious 
beyond imagination. The tax-gatherers and excise men pursue 
their victims into the minutest details of their domestic affairs 
when they believe that they see an actual or an intended fraud 
against the Exchequer; and these agents not only have the right, 
and the duty, but, what is more important, it is their personal 
interest, to proceed to the most rigorous search upon any sus- 
picion whatever. The natural consequences of this state of things 
is that a number of small producers and small traders have given 
up their businesses, because they did not find it worth while 
to subject themselves to such vexations, or because they were 
not able to meet the expenses which, per fas or per nefas, were 
always joined to such official acts. The result is the profound hatred 
which the people have against the tax-gatherers, a hatred which 
becomes more deeply rooted every day, and which is even already 
shown too frequently by bloody struggles, and sometimes murders 3 /-' 



i. De VAutriche et de son c.venir, vol. I, pp. 38 to 64. — 2. Idem, p. 95. — 3. Idem, p. 104. 



218 



66 Agriculture and rural economy are very far from having reached 
in Austria the degree of improvement which they have attained in 
other countries, especially in England and some parts of Germany. 
This state of things ought to be attributed to the land tax (I'impot 
fonder), which has been raised most unreasonably. In the heredi- 
tary countries of Austria these taxes bring in about triple what 
they yield in England; a country in which the average price of rural 
produce is double what it is in Austria 1 . 

"Austria has not as yet attained its agricultural development; and 
the system of mortages, so perplexed, so full of delays, so little fixed, 
does not appear to be well adapted to facilitate her progress. 
Agriculture needs capital, credit, and encouraging examples to 
excite emulation. In consequence of defective interior arrange- 
ments, there are no markets for their produce, and even if they could 
be found they would be impeded by a thousand noxious and vexa- 
tious fiscal regulations. Agriculture groans under taxes which it is 
almost impossible to pay, and in most of the provinces under the 
feudal system with its offerings in kind and otherwise, and all its 
most disastrous consequences. The result of this shameful situation 
is that Austria, a country almost exclusively agricultural, does not 
produce enough of corn for its own consumption , and that the 
importations of certain cereals is much greater than its exportations. 2 
The commercial policy of Austria is still very far from being what 
it ought to be, and it cannot be otherwise under the system which 
prevails ; for, in a country where the wants and wishes of the people 
have no organ, and where they are submitted to the routine of a 
careless bureaucracy, they generally do not reach till it is too late, 
and sometimes only by chance, the knowledge of the government; 
and in such a country they do not know how to apply a large and 
energetic policy, which goes in advance of the wants of the age. 
Every province continues to be administered well or ill, as it was in 
past times, and every official pursues his own object, although often 
diametrically opposed to that of others. The financial administration 
quarrels with the political authority, and the military administration 
with them both. The one sustains against the other a lawsuit which 
endures for years, and boasts of its victory when it succeeds in extract- 
ing anything from the other; and it never enters into the mind of 
anybody that they are not only the servants of the same prince, but 
of the same country. This want of unity in the authorities is doubly 
pernicious in Austria, because all the government is concentrated 



\. Dc VAutriche et de son nvmir, vol. I, pp. 108, 109. — 2. Idem, p. 110. 



219 



in authority into which all the political life drawn from the other 
members of the state has been crowded, and with which therefore 
the whole body is paralysed. Like every other Austrian institution, 
the Council of State founded by the Emperor Francis was attainted 
from the first year of its existence by the dissolving force of the 
bureaucracy; a force which takes away the soul of everything 
which ought to live. This council was also changed into a simple 
chamber, where everything was done by writing in separate sections, 
where all the nominations, and moreover all the tendencies, are 
bureaucratic. Since then, the ancient disorder and chaos have 
continued to reign with more strength than ever. 

"Consequently, we witness the commercial and consular relations 
of Austria with other States suffer from privileged vices; we see also 
the good openings for commerce and good markets neglected; and, 
finally, we see the merchant marine degenerating instead of 
improving. 

f* If it be true, and we do not think it necessary to prove it in our 
day, that every advancement in general prosperity, every intellectual 
and material improvement of nations, depends on the free deve- 
lopment of their common life, it flows naturally from thence that 
a government which opposes so many obstacles to it cannot be 
otherwise than prej udicial to the national progress. Experience has 
established the truth only too incontestably of this principle in 
Austria K " 

" The Austrian functionaries form a body which, obstructing, 
dividing, and perplexing everything, place themselves between the 
prince and the people, intercept the benevolent intentions of the one, 
as the wishes and petitions of the other, and produce as the result 
a work unrecognisable and absurd. The government lets it alone. 
The system which has prevailed, and which still prevails, is the 
system of temporising, palliating, remaining passive, letting alone, 
and avoiding every energetic measure and every radical reform. 

" What have been the results of the Austrian policy ? At home, 
the government has alienated the sympathies of the people, the State 
is involved in a continually increasing mass of debts, the material 
prosperity has made and makes an infinitely slow progress , 
intellectual interests are neglected, and finally the empire seems to 
be on the eve of splitting up, inconsequence of the constantly diverg- 
ing tendencies of its different parts. Abroad, Austria has lost her 
strength, consideration, and influence. She owes the place which 



1. De I'Autriche et do son avenir, VOL I, pp. 195 to 111. 



220 



she occupies among the great nations of Europe only to a certain 
veneration for her ancient power. As to her veritable influence, 
that which is founded upon the intrinsic value of nations, and deriv- 
ed from a tendency which is pursued without deviation, it has long 
been lost by Austria K " 

(i Whilst all the governments are profiting from the long peace 
to march in advance, Austria, like the unfaithful servant, is hiding 
the talents which the Lord has confided to her. She believes that, 
she remains stationary, and does not perceive that, in the midst of 
the universal progress, those who do not advance go backward. 
Although she possesses the presidency of the Diet, she has seen, in 
spite of the ancient recollections which her name awakes, Prussia 
obtain an influence which, instead of lessening, is continually on 
the increase. 

u Austria is despised, neglected, and hated in Germany, because 
she is regarded as the support of superannuated and retrograde 
principles, while Prussia has, wisely calculating her interests, placed 
herself at the head of liberal progress. When the great European 
powers have sustained by their efforts the decisive movements 
which were made towards liberty and civilisation, there was one 
among them which withdrew alone ; and when the whole of 
Christendom palpitated at the spectacle of the heroic struggle of our 
brethren against the barbarians, remained aloof with a sulky air, a 
motionless spectator of the conflict; she did not dare to oppose the 
general movement of Europe, and take openly the side of the barba- 
rian oppressors, but her sympathies, her wishes, and her secret 
efforts, were in their favour. This power was Austria; and never- 
theless her dearest interests required her to contract a close al- 
liance with Oriental Christendom. This inconceivable policy has 
borne its fruits : Austrian influence is entirely lost in the East ; it 
has passed to other nations, who gain there every day more and 
more preponderance; and Austrian commerce, which is almost all in 
these latitudes, suffers considerably from it 2 . " 

16 We have conscientiously applied the scalpel to the dissection 
of Austria, and we have found her to be destitute of a solid basis, and 
that she does not rest upon any principle likely to endure; we have 
seen how she has decayed in her foreign relations, in the public 
opinion of Europe, and in her influence, and we have seen her 
abandoned to foreign and hostile influences upon all her frontiers. 
We have found her to be at home a medley of nationalities which 



1. De I'Aittriche et de son avcnir, vol. I, pp. 1-43, 144. — 2, Idem, pp. 148, 149. 



221 



are enemies of each other ; and in one word we have found a govern- 
mental machine without animation, without intelligence , and 
consequently without vigour 1 . " 

" The first part of the work entitled De VAulriche et de son Avc- 
nir, was written with the intention of indicating th e deep wounds by 
which all the vitality of our country threatens to escape ; to shew 
that the system of the government leads to disorganisation, ruins 
the soil under our feet, and drags the State to total wreck, while 
the governors weaken at their pleasure their natural supports, and 
even overturn them, although they have been endowed with them 
by certain and historic laws and this is done to lean upon institu- 
tions which have neither guarantees of duration, nor strength, nor 
authority. It remains to draw the induction from so many evils ; 
we have drawn it without fear and without compromise, and we 
have said that to save a monarchy ready to fall to pieces, a complete 
change ought to take place in the system of government 2 . " 

" Let them tell us who in Austria, from the throne to the cottage, 
has not a sincere conviction of the imperious necessity of an absolute 
reform, and who is happy enough to rock himself asleep in the 
agreeable delusion that the vaunted stability of Austria can last 
twenty years ! or even ten years ! This question will receive the 
same answer in the palaces of the great, in the imperial residences, 
in the chancelleries, and in the streets and places of our towns and 
of our villages; the moral revolution is accomplished 3 ." 

"Ever since 1809, Austria has gone back, to the profound 
affliction of all true patriots. Every sacred and fruitful idea, whether 
it comes from the Crown, the Estates, or the people, is quickly 
suppressed by the functionaries. Thauks to them, all progress, all 
development, every national impulse becomes impossible ; it is to 
them we must ascribe the deplorable stagnation of our material and 
intellectual life, as well as the continually increasing disorganisation 
of our fine monarchy. The provinces isolate themselves, popular 
agitations are incessantly renewed in obscurity : yes, the redemption 
is near 4 . " 

"The liberty of the press does not exist in the Austrian States; it 
is impossible for them, although they have the feeling of their right 
and the desire, to appeal by it to the opinions and intelligence of the 
most instructed part of the nation; their most important preroga- 
tives are destroyed or mutilated, and in favour of a bureaucratic 
despotism, which absorbs the power of the monarch and the liberty 



i. De I'Autriche et de son avenir, vol. I, p. 154. — 2. Idem, vol. II, pp. 1 to 10. — 3. Idem, 
p. 10. — 4. / em, p. 22. 



222 

of the people for its own advantage., without calculating the damage 
which results to the nation. This despotism suppresses at home 
the free tendencies of the people and their intellectual progress ; 
whilst abroad they wish to appear the champions of civilisation and 
the defenders of the loAver classes, whose degradation they contrive 
meanwhile to make eternal 1 . " 

" A system of mutism, unprecedented in history, has arrested the 
development and aspirations of mind in Austria. Power continues 
to resist firmly against all the efforts of the nation, and finds every 
means good for suppressing thought and intelligence; and this it 
does not only in directing education, but also in permitting the 
representation at the theatre of none but insignificant plays, which 
elevate neither the heart nor the mind. It would be admirable, if 
the adjective admirable could be applied to anything so melancholy, 
to observe with what constancy and cunning the power marches 
towards its object. When other governments try to improve the 
education and the morals of the people, with us they;exert them- 
selves to corrupt them or to let them stagnate in ignorance ; and the 
press is surrounded with obstructions. 

When comparing the number of schools which were founded 
after the war of independence with those of the present time ; when 
comparing the number of learned men with those of that day, 
although the number was still insufficient, with those of our day, we 
will be convinced that we have done nothing but go backwards 
during the last thirty years. When the nineteenth century came, 
with its liberty of the press and its political and moral progress, all 
these precious impulses had an influence upon Austria as upon the 
rest of Europe ; they did not try then, as formerly, to draw the 
curtain of ignorance over our languishing country ; and there was 
between Austria and its rulers a dumb war, which has never 
relaxed during thirty years, and, painful avowal ! the advantage has 
been on the side of pow T er, and this in great part by the fault of the 
nation. It is useless to deceive ourselves; the Austrians are de- 
spised by every body, and are the parias of intelligence and progress ; 
their countrymen, the Germans of other States, will not fraternise 
with them, and reproach them for their culpable indolence. Indeed, 
if they had renounced their affected gentleness, and laid their hands 
upon property, they would have acted less cruelly, for the most holy 
and the most precious possessions of man are virtue and intelligence, 
and those who try to deprive him of these blessings attack the 



1. De VAutriche et de son avenir, vol. II, p. 4'2. 



223 



dignity of man, and the immutable laws of his development. 
Can it be reasonable that a State containing 38 millions of inhabit- 
ants, and surrounded on all sides by countries in which unlimited 
publicity reigns, should not have the shadow even of the liberty of 
the press ? Tell us : is it becoming that Austria should be obliged 
to read foreign journals to learn what is passing in Austria ? The 
most absurd abuses remain unremedied, simply because it is not 
possible to make them known, and the ignorance of the public comes 
in aid of the interests and the laziness of the subaltern officials. 
Who is the Austrian, or who is the foreigner even, who, after having 
gone over Europe, will not confirm what we have advanced? The 
fact has become so intolerable that the bitterest enemies of the 
liberty of the press admit it themselves, and do not apply the 
remedy from the strength of that inertia which is the original sin 
of the nation. If Austria had, as Prussia has already long had, a 
publicity capable of fixing opinion, the clamour raised by the Mends 
and enemies of power would not take place ; but as long as only one 
party can talk, and the other is forced to be silent, those who speak 
will never be able to persuade. It is thus that the government, by 
its ownfault, finds itself impotent before opinion; and that the world, 
and particularly its own subjects, throw dirt in its face. It is 
wounded with its own arms; and the falsehood with which it 
wishes to kill the truth kills itself. 

" Why not then boldly recognise the imperious want of the age, 
felt both by the rulers and the ruled, of a reasonable publicity ; and, 
instead of having recourse to all those indirect means, as dishonour- 
able as useless, proclaim at once the liberty of the press ? Certainly, 
it would not be a rash act. Prussia, in which the monarchical prin- 
ciple is not less solid than among us, already possesses this benefit of 
the age, and the government increases even at the present moment 
the number of its organs, in order to be able to struggle more 
effectually with its adversaries. Such is the conduct of a strong 
government, conscious of its own rights, and the purity of its inten- 
tions. But to entrench always behind the brutal power of the 
censorship, is on the one hand to confess weakness, and on the 
other to leave the field open to suspicion and reproaches. 

"If this demi-libertyhad existed, the government would have had 
less powerful arguments against it, and in return would have had 
stronger ones in its own defence. At present, it may be truly said 
that it has purposely pushed into the opposition party the first 
minds of the nation, for no man of honour and conviction dare take 
its part. This is so true, that the writings published in such abun- 



dance in its favour are either not read, or, if read, it is with the re- 
solution taken in advance not to believe a word they say 1 . " 

" Never has the censorship been, at any epoch, more rigorous 
than it is at present, chiefly in regard to literature; and we may say 
that during a century we have marched backwards. The govern- 
ment has taken a hostile and ridiculous position against intelli- 
gence, science, and literature, without deriving any thing from it 
except disadvantage. Every year, and every month, for thirty 
years. the censorship has become more severe and more abstruse, 
and at present it has reached a point at which it is absurd. There 
are certain anecdotes of the Austrian censorship which would 
make the fortune of a comic almanack V 

u With the exception of that of the lower class, education in 
Austria is, it must be said, in a most pitiable condition, and in or- 
ganising it they seem to have abstracted the principle that the 
student ought to have for his constant object science, the knowledge 
of truth. All they have wished is, that our colleges and univer- 
sities should form bureaucracies, adapted to perpetuate the existing 
order of things. Physicians, advocates, ecclesiastics, receive these 
inspirations. Properly speaking, our lyceums are nothing but 
schools for civil cadets, where science and literature are complete- 
ly neglected, and all particular lectures, no matter upon what 
subject, are forbidden, or permitted only in extraordinary circums- 
tances 3 /' 

" Thanks to the pusillanimity of the chiefs and their partisans, 
Austria has fallen very low in opinion ; the distrust and discontent 
which the government excites, without thinking of the future, 
germinates like fertile seeds, and will one day bear bitter fruits, of 
which it ought to taste itself the bitter savour; for, without any 
doubt, the reaction will come, and the elfect of this exaggerated des- 
potism is to predispose to radicalism ; as long as the government 
shall continue in its old routine, opinion will be always against it, 
even when it acts for the public good V 



In commencing our study of Austria, we said that the govern- 
ment and the clergy were united together to rule the nation by 
depriving it of liberty and light. We may say that Prussia has 
followed a directly opposite course, and is endeavouring to guide 

1. De I'Autriche et de son avtnir, vol. Ill, pp. 61 to 71. — 2. Idem, p. 78. — 3. Idem, 
pp. 80 10 83. — 4. Idem, pp. 152, 153. 



the people by gradually bestowing on them this intellectual light 
and liberty. W e shall not stay to develope this assertion ; the autho- 
rities we shall quote will suffice to convince the reader. All that 
we have to do is to exhibit the Prussian government, animated, 
with a Protestant spirit, diffusing instruction and liberty with the 
same eagerness which Austria displays in restraining the former, 
and enchaining the latter. When we have thus proved that 
these two germs of Protestant life really exist in the Prussian soil, 
we shall see what fruits they produce there. 

After having examined Prussia, we shall pass to neighbouring 
states, which profess the same religious faith, to prove that the same 
principles elsewhere produce the same results. We might here 
leave the reader to compare for himself Southern Germany, which 
we have considered, with Northern Germany, which we are about 
to consider ; but, for the sake of further evidence, we shall again 
refer to our various authors. Finally, we shall conclude by asking 
these same writers what is the cause of the contrast Ave have noticed, 
and thus our plan will be complete. Our first question then is the 
following : Whilst Austria extinguishes the light of knowledge, 
and forbids liberty of thought, is it true that Prussia, on the con- 
trary, governs by means of that light and that liberty ? First, take 
the testimony of Mirabeau, who, having been already quoted with 
respect to Austria, must also be referred to as regards Prussia : 
" The constitution of Prussia well deserves the attention of every 
thinking man. It is a vast and beautiful machine, in the construc- 
tion of which superior artists have laboured for centuries. It 
possesses many excellent qualities ; the spirit of order and regula- 
rity may be said to be inehrent; liberty of thought and religious 
toleration are governing principles. This example affords a salutary 
and irresistible demonstration of the fact that, far from being 
incompatible with a monarchical government, these two treasures 
of mankind are most favourable to it. 

" Civil liberty extends almost as far as is possible in a country 
under the absolute government of a single individual. There 
exists a military system, which requires but little change to rendre 
it perfect. The Prussian monarchy, in short, presents to Europe 
the example of a legislation to which no other nation approaches. 
Surely these points deserve attention V 

Listen now to more modern authorities : i( Prussia/' says M. de 
Rougemont, " is one of those states in which instruction is very 

1. Mirabeau, vol. vi, p. 360, 361. 



226 



generally diffused, and watched over with the greatest care. The 
number of schools increases annually. There is no country where 
science and learning are more encouraged, or cultivated with 
greater success. The inhabitants have reached a high degree of 
moral and intellectual attainment K " 

" The Prussian government pays the greatest attention to public 
education, and the advancement of the arts and sciences ; and the 
people are probably more generally instructed in this than in any 
other kingdom. Freedom is granted to all religious denominations 
in the Prussian monarchy 2 . " 

Prussia pursues her laudable efforts to extend instruction 
amongst all classes. In execution of the law of May 16, 1853, all 
the proprietors of workshops and manufactories, having among 
their artisans young persons under 16 years of age, have just been 
summoned to prove that they oblige them to attend school at least 
three hours every day 3 . " 

" In Prussia, instruction is adorned with all that can render it 
attractive and honourable. The university professorship leads to the 
highest positions in the land. Professional education is most 
carefully attended to ; individual capacities are called forth and 
brought into exercise. Young men destined for public positions 
are obliged to follow a course of instruction in constitutional law 
and political economy. After a rigorous examination, every stu- 
dent, without exception, is required to pass through a certain course 
of study, and thus, by constant practice, the theoretical part of 
education is completed. It can easily be believed that such a 
system sceures a greater amount of morality and knowledge in 
those to whom the direction of public affairs is confided than that 
which prevails with us *. " 

" The greatest title which Prussia possesses to the admiration of 
Modern Europe is in the organisation of education. Instruction is 
there regarded in the light of a debt owed by the State to the 
people. Offered gratuitously to the poor, and at ,a trifling cost to 
others, it is imposed by the law on all. Such a system, based on 
the principle that religion, knowledge, and good morals, are neces- 
sary for the welfare of the people, evidently flows from the sincere 
desire of inspiring the rising generation with the love of God, of 
their country, and their family; and of establishing Prussian society 
on the firm groundwork of a morality which at all times dignifies 
its possessor. 

1. Rougemont, p. 486. — 2. Omalius, pp. 208 to 210. — 3. Edm. Texier, Steele du 28 th De- 
cember, 1853. — 4. De Joimes, Introduction, pp. 1 to 12. 



227 



"The census of 1843 shows that, in Prussia, out of a population 
of 2,992/124 children, including all from six to fourteen years of 
age, 2,328,146 attend elementary schools; that is, seventy-nine per 
cent, throughout Prussia. In the province of Saxony, the propor- 
tion is raised to ninety-four per cent. In no other country in 
Europe is instruction so widely diffused 1 . 

" We must in justice acknowledge that the philosophic school of 
Germany is worthy of the renown it has acquired, for no other 
since the days of Plato has heen ahle to boast of so many celebrated 
masters. The opinions of Descartes, imbibed by Leibnitz, have 
been transplanted to a fruitful soil. If in other countries the pro- 
blem of human destiny has been solved with greater clearness, it 
has nowhere been adorned with more dignity, nor enlivened by 
such bright expectations. By means of professional instruction, 
and the universal diffusion of education, philosophy has found its 
way in Prussia into general society, and into the government itself. 
The knowledge of right and duty, ideas of beauty, truth, and 
justice, the moral application of history, are not there mere theories 
of the learned ; they stamp intelligence, reflection, and moral 
dignity everywhere, even among the women and children. In 
France, philosophy is only a barren abstraction to the great mass of 
the people ; but in Germany it is a popular and practical science. 
Human perfectibility has there become a matter of belief, and in- 
tellectual progress an object of worship. This philosophic faith of 
the Germans makes them vigorous and hopeful ; we are astonished 
elsewhere to find a lower standard of morality, and to discover 
that selfishness and love of gain can overcome integrity, wither 
the heart, and depress the genius ; the evil which destroys us, is 
scepticism. 

Notwithstanding the great variety of sects and doctrines in 
Prussia, there exists there an excessive attachment to certain 
dogmas. The people cannot remain in a state of indifference ; and 
the desire for unity which fills their minds disposes them to seek 
means for making these various sects agree among themselves, and 
they even endeavour to amalgamate reiigious belief and philosophil 
cal reasoning. It is difficult to comprehend all the inteilectua- 
efforts which open-hearted Germany has made to bring about this 
general uniformity of opinion 2 . " 

" In the 17 th century, freedom of opinion was protected and 
favoured in Prussia; it was there that its power first became mani- 

1. Be Joimes, p. 179. — 2. Idem, pp. 189, 190; 



228 



fest. People began to philosophise upon different sciences ; upon 
the history of jurisprudence for example; and this mode of study 
was soon fouud to exercise an important influence upon the cul- 
tivation of history, and other kindred sciences ; as well as upon the 
civil and individual rights of the people. The Academy of Science 
at Berlin, established under the auspices of Leibnitz, greatly in- 
creased the progress made in mathematics and the physical 
sciences. Literary societies and clubs were formed in various 
places. The book trade became an important branch of com- 
merce, and journals devoted to criticism were put forth, which 
gave their influence in favour of arts and science V 

" With what spirit and intelligence did the king himself encou- 
rage the progress of education among the people ! How many 
collections have been made, institutions founded, and voyages of 
discovery undertaken at the expense of government since 1816! 
No country of the same extent and resources devotes so much 
money to education and to religious purposes. There are I 07 gym- 
nasia in Prussia, and an examining jury in every province. The 
religious education of the people is an object of anxious attention 
to the government. It is based upon pure Protestantism. The 
king himself sets an example of earnestness in religious duties 2 ." 

" This prince considers no sacrifice too great, if made for the en- 
couragement of arts, science, and education; and such strict 
economy is observed, that the public treasury has continued in a 
thriving state, notwithstanding the large sums expended for these 
purposes z " 

But if any one may be considered as an authority on such points, 
it would be assuredly that learned individual who was sent by a 
neighbouring nation to examine into the state of education in 
Prussia. We quote, then, in the next place the testimony of 
M. Cousin : 

ee No one can undertake any public situation in Prussia before 
undergoing a strict examination. As those who fill such situa- 
tions are for the most part taken from all classes of society, and 
have all received a literary education, they bring the general 
spirit of the country into their professional employments, while 
at the same time they acquire the habit of legislation \ " "The 
smallest parish is obliged to have an elementary school, where 
the whole course of instruction prescribed by law, or, at least, its 
most indispensable parts, must be taught. Such schools, there- 

1. Dictionnaire de la Conversation, article AVemagne, pp. 384, 385. — 2. Idem, article rrusse, 
p. 390. —3. Idem, p. 396. — -i. Cousin, p. 156. 



229 

fore, are to be found in every part of Prussia; but it is not suffi- 
cient to establish them; they must be also maintained. Provision 
to this effect is made by clause V of the law of 1819. This law 
begins by fixing such a complete maintenance for every school as 
may enable it to answer its proper end. 

" 1. A suitable income for the schoolmasters and mistresses; 
and a pension secured to them when no longer able to continue 
their services. 

" 2. A building for exercise and instruction, properly arranged 
and comfortably warmed. 

" 3. Furniture, books, pictures, instruments, and every other 
requisite for study and exercise. 

" 4. Pecuniary assistance for needy scholars. 

<( Tf any village is so situated that it can neither connect itself 
with schools in other villages, nor maintain one for itself, from 
want of necessary funds, assistance may be obtained from the de- 
partment. 

" In towns, the education of youth and the means for its sup- 
port must never be considered secondary to any effort for the 
public good, but must be regarded as an object of primary impor- 
tance, and provided for accordingly 1 ." 

" The main end of every school/' says the law of 1819, " is, so 
to train up the rising generation that they may not only be well 
acquainted with the relation in which man stands to God, but may 
also be imbued with an earnest desire to regulate their lives accord- 
ing to the spirit and principles of Christianity. In the school, 
children will be early trained to habits of piety, and thus home 
instructions will be seconded and completed. 

"The work of the day should be begun and ended by a short 
prayer, and a few religious remarks, which the master should 
offer in such a manner that these exercises may never sink into 
a mere form. 

u The masters should also take care that the children attend 
divine worship punctually on the Sundays and festival. Sacred 
songs and hymns should be included among the religious lessons. 
Particular attention should be paid to inculcate on the young 
obedience to the laws, and faithful attachment to the Prince and 
the State, that they may thus be early inspired with devoted love 
of their country. Paternal feeling, affection, and kindness on the 
part of masters towards their pupils will prove the most effectual 



1. Cousin, pp. 177 to 180. 



230 



security against surrounding evil influence, and the best means of 
guiding them in the right way. 

" No punishment should at any time be inflicted, the nature of 
which might weaken the sense of honour, and in cases where cor- 
poral discipline may be necessary, undue severity should be care- 
fully avoided, so that modesty may never be wounded, nor the 
health injured !. 

" In every commune of the kingdom, without exception, mi- 
nisters of all denominations should seize every opportunity, 
whether in the church, during their visit to the school, or 
in their opening addresses, to remind the heads of schools of the 
importance of their task, and the people of their duties towards 
the school. The civil and ecclesiastical authorities and the mas- 
ters should everywhere combine to draw more closely together 
those links of respect and attachment which should bind the 
people to the school, so that they may be more and more accus- 
tomed to regard it as an essential part of the common welfare, 
and be daily more interested in its progress 2 ." 

(C This law of 1819 only served to systematise the existing order 
of things. It is not therefore an Utopian scheme, metaphysical, 
arbitrary, and artificial, like the majority of our laws on elemen- 
tary education, but is founded on reality and experience. It has 
therefore been put into execution, and has rapidly produced the 
happiest results. The determination of the authorities to bring 
it into force has been so firm, the scrutiny of the government 
inspector so strict, and the authorities of the communes, depart- 
ments, and provinces set over the schools have displayed such 
persevering and well-directed zeal , that at the present moment 
the requirements of the law are almost everywhere more than 
carried out : I mean, in every point in which zeal only is de- 
manded. For instance, a large normal elementary school is esta- 
blished by law in every department; but, besides this, small 
branch normal schools are often to be met with 3 . Such schools in 
Prussia are not often conspicuous. They are more frequently 
concealed, and this is both honourable and meritorious. They 
dilfer from the larger schools, not only because the pupils are 
much fewer in number, but chiefly because most of them are 
intended to train village schoolmasters for the poorest parishes. 
That is strictly their original design , for which they are well 
and usefully adapted. There are many poor districts, where one 



1. Cousin, pp. 192, 193. — 2. Idem, p. 199.— 3. Idem, pp. 242, 243. 



234 

would hesitate to send a talented schoolmaster, yet it is just in 
such places that instruction is most needed. These small normal 
schools are calculated to supply the deficiencies of the larger. They 
are organised expressly for the poor and ignorant parts of the country, 
for whose benefit they carry on their labours, their studies, their 
discipline. The large normal schools of Prussia doubtless deserve 
our highest esteem ; but we can never sufficiently respect these 
smaller seminaries, which, as before remarked, are more desirous 
of concealment than of show. While the former seek to be en- 
riched, the latter are willing to be poor because they labour for the 
poor; they cost very little, and do a great deal of good. They are 
established with the greatest ease, on one single condition : that 
directors and pupils be devoted to their work, without seeking the 
praise of men. Religion alone can engender and maintain such 
true devotedness of spirit. When we are willing to serve our 
fellow creatures without being known or esteemed, our eye must 
be directed towards the providence of God; and we must seek his 
approbation, rather than that of men. The originators and direc- 
tors of these small schools are therefore generally either clergy- 
men, animated with Christian love, or laymen of piety, filled with 
an earnest desire for the instruction of the people. The spirit of 
Christianity, combined with love for their fellow creatures, espe- 
cially for the poor, pervades these humble institutions 1 . " 

" 1 abstain from any remark on the regulation of these normal 
schools, which seem to have been derived from Saint Vincent de 
Paule. Most of the small normal schools of Prussia are founded and 
conducted in this spirit. They are all based on the sacred ground- 
work of Christianity, and, notwithstanding their humble appear- 
ance, every suspicion of vulgarity is removed by the earnest 
desire for solid instruction, and the taste for music and for works 
of nature which are there found. It would be well if some 
worlhy ecclesiastic in France would acquaint himself with the re- 
gulations of these schools, and undertake a similar mission 2 . " 

" I have seen the actual working of the normal school at Pots- 
dam ; the arrangement of that institution in all its various details 
and the system of instruction are excellent. I was present at 
several lessons, when (from politeness to myself) the pupils were 
questioned on French history. These young persons answered 
very well, and were quite conversant with the dates and principal 
facts. M. Striez, the director, is a minister and preacher of the 



1. Cousin, p. 296. — 2. Idem, p. 306. 



232 



Gospel; a serious intelligent man, who reminded me of M. Schweit- 
zer, of the normal school at Weimar. I ought also to mention that 
all the pupils in this school appeared happy, and that they were 
very well-behaved. If they had brought any vulgarity with them 
to school, they had entirely lost it. I left the institution much 
gratified, filled with' esteem for their director, and with respect for 
a country where popular education had attained so high a point K** 

We have seen how limited is the course of study in Austria. 
We shall now see that in Protestant Prussia it is more extended 
than in any other country : *' The examinations for the University 
take place in every gymnasium, in the case of those who have 
there completed their studies, and are called " examen de depart." 
In the case of such young men as have not studied in the gym- 
nasia, these examinations are held before a scientific commission. 
This examination comprehends, in a very remarkable degree, 
mathematics and science, as well as ancient languages and litera- 
ture : the French language even forms a part. The grand trial at 
this examination consists in the written compositions; the oral 
examination is also very difficult. I have seen the compositions 
of such an examination in one of the best schools at Berlin, which 
appeared to me to exhibit a solid acquaintance with the different 
branches of learning in which instruction was given. In my opi- 
nion, this examination, as it regards rhetoric, is not only stricter 
than our examination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, but it is 
even stricter than our examination for a licentiate 2 . " 

cc We may consider that system of public instruction to be well 
organised where the four following points are secured : 

"1. That the whole population, all, I mean, without exception, 
boys and girls, in town and in country, should attend elementary 
schools, with or without payment ; 

2. That all the middle class, in towns, should attend superior 
elementary schools ; 

" 3. That a sufficient number of youths, from the middle and 
upper classes, should attend the lower division of the colleges; 

" -4. That a selection of pupils should be made from this 
number, not on account of superiority of birth or fortune, but on 
account of talent and diligence in their studies, who, after suitable 
trial, should pass into the higher division of the college; from 
thence to the University, and from thence again into the higher 
ranks of society. 



I. Cousin, p. 381. — 2. Hew, Instruction secondare, pp. 69, 70. 



233 



" This idea is almost realised in Prussia. We have elsewhere 
proved that in J 831 out of a population of 12,726,823, 2,403,030 
children, that is to say, all who were old enough to go to school, 
were in actual attendance ; and that, of this number, 56,889 boys, 
and 46,598 girls, in all 103,487 children, attended superior ele- 
mentary schools 1 . " 

" There are five gymnasia in Berlin , without reckoning the 
royal gymnasium, which, on account of certain modifications in 
the rules, is gradually becoming an ordinary gymnasium. Of 
these 6 gymnasia, three belong to the state, and three to the town, 
and yet Berlin contains a population of no more than 200,000. In 
the same proportion, a town of 800,000 inhabitants, such as Paris, 
ought to have four times as many; that is to say, nearly 20 col- 
leges ; instead of which, Paris contains only 7, five of which belong 
to the State, and two to the town. In Prussia, there are a consi- 
derable number of cities, containing from 30,000 to 40,000 inha- 
bitants, possessing several gymnasia, which, far from being ill 
attended, are very well filled, especially in the lower and middle 
classes. A college must always be judged of by the character of 
the studies, and the excellence of the discipline ; in this respect, 
the gymnasia of Prussia may be regarded as models. Besides the 
gymnasium of Seholpfort, in the province of Saxony, I have care- 
fully examined the six gymnasia in Berlin, and can bear my testi- 
mony that a solid and first-rate education ( I speak of literary 
education, of which alone I am capable of judging), is imparted 
in every one of them 2 ." 

" The hope of the country lies in the students who have passed 
three or four years at the University; from their ranks proceed the 
theologians, lawyers, medical men, professors of schools and 
Universities, and all who hold public situations of the first and 
second class ; for these situations are only given in Prussia to those 
who have passed through a literary examination. It is for this very 
purpose the gymnasia have been instituted, and in this point of 
view they must be regarded not only as literary establishments, 
hut also, in conjunction with the Universities to which they are 
preparatory, as the centres of the moral strength and vigour of the 
nation, and of its existing political institution 3 . " 

" The high importance assigned to religious instruction, is no less 
striking a feature in the Prussian gymnasia. In each of the six 
classes of which the gymnasium is composed, a cou rse of religious 



1. Cousin, Instruction secondare, pp. 118, 119. — 2. Idem, pp. 123, 124.— 3. Idem, p. 127. 



234 



instruction is given as regularly as that of Latin, Greek, or mathe- 
matics. The performance of divine worship alone is not sufficient 
for young persons of reflecting minds ; thorough religious instruction 
is indispensable, and nothing is so well calculated to afford that 
instruction, at once full, systematic, and varied in its character, as 
Christianity itself. One might have supposed that such instruction 
would have been established at the time of the Restoration in 
France, when religion was incessantly spoken of. Such was far from 
being the case, and all the zeal then displayed was expended on the 
multiplication of outward services. I know no government which 
has more injured the cause of religion. The Restoration reduced 
the chaplain to the grade of a curate, or even of a catechist for the 
lower classes. Christianity without instruction, reduced to an 
unmeaning spectacle, instead of elevating and delighting the mind, 
serves only to weary and degrade it 1 . " 

But we have said enough on education; let us pass now to its 
effects. We may say that the Prussian government has been able 
from that time to grant these wise, progressive, practical rights and 
privileges, without danger to itself, and much to the advantage of 
every kind of progress. 

" Prussia/'' says Moreau de Jonnes, " in remoulding her society, 
has successively cast into the crucible of reform, property, civil 
rights, religion, administration, the army, public education, in- 
dustry, commerce, political power, and territorial division. Forty 
years ago, Prussia was monarchical in government, and feudal in 
civil constitution ; now, she is a free state, almost representative, 
and occupies an important position as an industrial and commercial 
country. Such a transformation in an intelligent, powerful, and 
well-governed nation of 16,000,000, cannot be a matter of indiffer- 
ence to any one. The Protestant and sensitive Germany of the 
North (widely different from the Catholic and lethargic Germany of 
the South), is convulsed by the shocks of empires, and trembles at 
the slightest excitement among the nations. Her people have been 
either the heroes or the auxiliaries of the most memorable events 
of the modern world. In the course of the two centuries which 
comprise her short existence, we have witnessed the growth and 
the education of a great nation ; we have seen that nation, in spite 
of every obstacle, attaining strength and stability, proclaiming 
liberty of conscience, and becoming the first to open the way of 
emancipation to the world. Philosophy seated on the throne, 



1. Cousin, Instruction secondaire, pp. 143, 144. 



2.35 



exercises toleration for half a century; at a later period slavery is 
abolished; civil privileges, and equality of rights are granted, and 
all those glorious principles are established which have been gained 
elsewhere by means of insurrection. Prussia continues to rise by 
industry in peace, after having already risen by courage in war. 
She is the land of discipline and of perseverance. The Zoliverein 
constitutes for her a commercial empire, of which she herself holds 
the sceptre. The railways which extend from the capital in all 
directions entwine the Germanic body with a network of living 
fibres, of which Berlin is the centre. Prussia draws Germany to 
herself by a concentration of feeling and interests, and rules her by 
a much more irresistible and lasting ascendancy than that which is 
acquired by conquest. This universal development, accomplished 
at first for the advantage of one intelligent and progressing dynasty, 
has become, after 30 years, the united work of a whole nation 
raised to the highest rank by the sole power of its own genius and 
institutions. Amongst the most conspicuous promoters of modern 
civilisation, should we not mention the aristocracy of England, the 
people in France, and the monarchy in Prussia? The facilities 
afforded for intellectual development, the attention bestowed in 
Prussia upon education, the increase of pecuniary resources, by 
means of labour, the wonderful improvements in agriculture; all 
testify to the energy of the efforts made by Prussia to extend the 
necessaries of life to all, instead of allowing luxury to be the privi- 
lege of a few, while poverty is the lot of a far larger number 1 . " 

"In extending his plans of intellectual improvement, Frederick 
William, with the wisdom he always displays in civil administra- 
tion, has not overlooked those secular matters which tend to encou- 
rage labour, to stimulate ingenuity, and to promote individual 
convenience as well as the prosperity of the State. Public works 
have been carried on to a great extent; new roads, ports, canals, 
river navigation, improvements in tillage and farming, have raised 
agriculture to a degree of perfection which is surpassed only in 
Holland and England. Nothing has proved more satisfactorily the 
intelligence of the Prussian government, and the sincere desire for 
improvement which animates it, than the rapid formation of rail- 
ways. Although this work is entrusted to companies, the State 
has frequently assisted in its progress, either by taking a certain 
number of shares, or by granting a minimum of interest of three 
per cent, to the shareholders. A well arranged junction of the lines 



1. De Jonnes, Introduction, pp. 1 to 12. 



236 



of the Rhenish Province with those of Belgium, and of the Prussian 
northern lines with those of Saxony and Austria, has in the course 
of a few years, and as if by magic, covered the centre of the continent 
from Holland to Sw itzerland, from Hambourg to Venice, and from 
Cologne to Varsovie, with a net-work of immense lines, skilfully 
intertwined ; thus approximating the inhabitants of distant nations, 
and uniting, as it w ere, seas and countries in one common centre 1 . 
Nothing is wanting to complete the glory of Prussia; neither the 
palm of the great Captain, nor the civic crown of the legislator. If 
we examine attentively the system of legislation pursued by Frede- 
rick William III during the peaceful period of his reign, we shall 
perceive that one grand idea, a most generous and philosophical one, 
occupied his mind, and that in uniting the various parts of that 
system, he constructed a noble monument of social organisation. 
We may follow^ out this idea, and conceive the edifice of moral and 
physical power in Prussia to rest upon four stately columns; reli- 
gion, military force, education, and industry. To raise the moral 
and intellectual standard of the nation, to increase public wealth 
and individual prosperity by promoting industry and commerce ; 
such is the grand object of the admirable institutions we have enu- 
merated, and w hich Frederick William has carried into operation 
with a zeal for the well-being of society and for intellectual progress 
which will transmit his name with honour to posterity 2 . " 

M . de Rougemont sums up in a few words the rights and privileges 
enjoyed by Prussia : " Since the commencement of this century, the 
peasantry have been freed from those taxes which formerly pressed 
so heavily upon them, and upon their land. The cities have receiv- 
ed municipal institutions V v u Prussia is the powerful kingdom 
upon which, more than upon any other, depend the liberty and the 
greatness of Germany *, " And now, we may inquire, what fruits 
have been produced in Prussia and in the other Protestant states of 
Germany from these two principles of science and liberty which we 
have seen springing up under the influence of religious reform ? 
The question will be answered by the following quotation : 

" The result of Luther's reformation in Germany w~as what may 
be called liberty of thought and opinion. Opinion became a matter 
of right. The Church had never given free permission to discussion, 
and, as if to protest against such a liberty, she had been w r ont, from 
time to time, to hand over some unhappy scholar to the flames ! 
But, from Luther's time, things w ere different. No distinction w^as 

1. Do Jolmes, pp. 179 to 181. — 2. idem, p. 193. — 3. Rougemont, pp. 486 to 490. 
— 4. Idem, p. «1. 



now made between theological truth and philosophical truth, and 
public disputations were held in the German language without op- 
position. The princes who received the reformed religion allowed 
this liberty of thought, and the introduction of the German system 
of philosophy was one of the most important results that followed. 
No where, not even in Greece, has the human mind been permitted 
so to express itself and to expand so freely as it has in Germany, 
from the middle of the last century to the period of the French Re- 
volution 1 . Liberty of thou ght and Protestantism are united by strong- 
ties in Germany ; these two things are as closely connected as mother 
and daughter. Although the Protestant Church has been reproach- 
ed with narrow-mindedness, it must be remembered, to her im- 
mortal glory, that in permitting free examination in the Christian 
Church, she has released the human mind from the yoke of autho- 
rity ; and that this liberty of examination, in Germany especially, 
has led to the unrestrained development of science. German philo- 
sophy, though she may consider herself in the present day to be as 
high in position as the Protestant Church, or even higher, is never- 
theless only the daughter of that Church 2 . " 

" The mental activity which remained unchecked even during the 
long occupation of the French, is the strongest evidence that can be 
adduced of the advanced civilisation of the people of Prussia, and of 
the wisdom of the government. Though less favourably circum- 
stanced than the South, Northern Germany is more active and 
inventive. Prussia is powerful from her history, which abounds 
in glorious deeds; from the rank which she holds as the first 
Protestant nation of the continent ; and from the national spirit of 
her intelligent and enterprising population. Germany owes her 
deliverance to Prussia; it is to be hoped that she will become 
indebted to her for internal prosperity also. 

" Notwithstanding the tendency to autocracy, political freedom 
since the reign of Frederick II has made its way into the govern- 
ment of Prussia with greater ease than into the more independent 
States ; the cause of this is, the re-establishment of individual liberty, 
and the suppression of servitude. Merit is sufficient to lead to 
employment, even of the highest kind ; and as long as such wise 
principles continue in vigorous operation, Prussia may boast of a 
government too strong to fear disturbance. 

" Prompt justice, conscientiously discharged without respect of 
persons, has long been the characteristic of the Prussian tribunal. 



1. IlciUC, VOl. I, pp. 34 to 3G. — 2. Idem, p. 283. 



238 



Any Prussian may write to the King, and make complaints even of 
the chief minister of the State. He is sure that he will receive a 
reply, and that justice will be done him. How different is this 
mode of proceeding from what we have witnessed in Austria, where 
the poor old men, who dare to complain of their lord, are answered 
only by the bastinado i . " 

" We find in Prussia a people belonging to the same stock as the 
Austrians, but far more vigorous, active, and enterprising. Prus- 
sia's political existence is of scarcely three centuries' duration : by 
what mysterious process can she have been raised, in so short a time, 
to rank among the five great European powers ? What was Prussia 
in the 16 th century? Her name was hardly deemed worthy of a 
place in the catalogue of the geographer ! and yet this little nation 
has risen up suddenly from the midst of Meclenbourg and Branden- 
bourg, where she has established herself in spite of every obstacle. 
Whatever may be the opinion of their neighbours, certain it is that 
the Prussians are more advanced in civilisation than any other 
nation in Germany 2 . " 

"Prussia is making rapid progress, both physically and intel- 
lectually. Agriculture is improving, trade flourishes, the army 
is large and well-disciplined ; the learned men, the writers, the 
artists, excite the admiration, and the jealousy too, of other na- 
tions, the rivals of Prussia in power and fame ; amongst those 
nations she occupies the position which of right belongs to her 3 . 
Prussia will be a model for all the other countries of Germany 
to endeavour to imitate, and the firm basis on which may be 
reared the great edifice of general unity 4 . " 

In speaking of the dwellings of the Prussian farmers on the 
shores of the Baltic, M. Salter tells us that they "are well built, 
healthy, tiled, and that they contain three large and airy apart- 
ments. The principal dwelling-house is surrounded by exterior 
buildings, which are sometimes superior to those of Norfolk. The 
condition of the labourers is equally comfortable. An excellent 
school is frequently established on the premises for the education 
of the children, and supported by the proprietor himself. The 
moral and physical state of the people is in every way satisfac- 
tory 5 . " 

" The revolution which the state of property has undergone in 
Prussia has been almost as important as that which has taken place 
in France ; it has given relief, maintenance, and property to a 



1. Dictionnaire de la Conversation, article frzisse, pp. 390 tO 396. —2. Tardif, pp. 49 to 51. 
— 3. Revue Britannique, March, April, p. 6. — 4 4 idem, p. 9.-5. Idem, pp. 300, 302; 



239 

nation of serfs; it has raised their physical and moral condition. 
But the prosperous state of Prussia is the best proof we can give of 
the well-timed measures adopted, and of the efficient manner in 
which they have been carried into operation. Did we need any 
further proof, we might mention the ardour with which all the 
other German States (Austria excepted) have followed the example 
of Prussia 1 ." 

" Prussia affords us a singular instance of the formation of a 
State. So rapid, indeed, has been the progress of this kingdom, 
which now claims to be the head of a new empire, that persons 
yet living may remember the time when the Sovereigns of Frussia 
could not obtain the recognition of their title from the Republic 
of Poland ! As to the name of Prussia, it was then confined to an 
uncultivated little spot in the north-eastern corner of the present 
kingdom, given up to the knights of the Teutonic order. Half of 
the other States of Germany have assisted, in spite of themselves, 
to increase the power of the chief of a small duchy, which the 
ability and valour of the princes and people raised, in a century 
and a half, to the highest rank among the nations of the world. 
In the time of Charles V no State in the Germanic body was able 
to dispute the supremacy of the House of Austria, [t was the ri- 
valry of the German and Spanish branches of that house, which 
formed the basis of the regulation system of the European policy, 
until Prussia's sudden appearance removed apprehensions, and 
caused new alliances to be made 2 . " 

i£ By a united system of custom-house tariff, Prussia has acquired 
an influence over Germany which can never be destroyed. She 
heads the intellectual movement of this country, and the Germans 
are now, in pride and confidence, expecting from her the realisation 
of their hopes of unity and greatness. The noble successor of the 
great Frederick has invited his people to take part in public affairs, 
and the citizens have shown themselves worthy of the confidence 
of their prince. The sympathy of all Europe, and the goodwill of 
the Germanic race, are directed towards Prussia. Every day tends 
to consolidate Germanic nationality, at the head of which stands 
Prussia and her political institutions. In a short time, this union 
will be completed ; and then those lingerers, who were once invited 
on account of their origin and early history to join in the general 
movement, will be finally excluded V 

We will nove give the more explicit testimony of a wise politi- 



1. Revue Britannique, 1847, September, October, pp. 331. — 2. Idem, 1848, July, August, 

pp. 253 to 256. — 3. De I'Autriche et de son avenir, vol. I, pp. 146, 147. 



240 

cian : " Certain industrial localities, " says M. de Jonnes," sach 
as the valley of the Oder, in Silesia, upon the Rhine, Crel'eid, and 
the valley of Bormen and of Elberfeld, have been transformed into 
streets many leagues in length, formed by lines of manufactories 
and workshops. The marshes, which once seemed likely to baffle 
the efforts of the Grand Elector, are now converted into verdant 
meadows, or lakes shaded by trees, on which is situated the royal 
city of Potsdam, surrounded by villas which vie in elegance and 
magnificence with those of Italy. Surely, when we consider the 
point and the epoch from whence the Prussian people started, we 
must acknowledge that few contemporary nations have made such 
rapid progress in so short a time; no country, excepting Holland 
perhaps, has had more to struggle with in regard to national dis- 
advantages, the state of the people, and internal weakness. None 
ever rose from such insignificance to so high a position as that 
which Prussia now occupies ; and if genius is to be estimated by 
the amount of difficulties and dangers overcome, she has indeed 
an undisputable right to head the nations in the march of civili- 
sation 1 . " 

" The people who conquered Napoleon knew their own power ; 
the people among whom appeard Kant, Niebuhr, Herder, Lessing, 
Schlegel, and many other distinguished men, must have been con- 
scious of the genius they possessed. Prussia is resolved to march 
on fearlessly, yet with caution, in the new course upon which she 
has entered. Prussia, the first of the Germanic nations in the 
struggle for independence , in the victory gained for religious 
liberty, in the establishment of civil emancipation; Prussia, the 
first in every movement, from her youthful ardour and intelligence, 
now asserts her just right and privilege of forming that grand com- 
pact which preserves the dignity and the interests of the people 2 . " 

" Notwithstanding our desire to avoid any appearance of exagge- 
ration, we cannot forbear mentioning the effects of the ameliora- 
tion alluded to in the condition of the people. Let us reflect what 
an amelioration it must be for a humble establishment of 4, 200 fr. 
to be raised to 2,000, and if the benefit be extended to other classes 
in the same proportion, how important will be the result ! It is a 
change from anxiety, privation, misery, to sufficiency, and even 
comfort. And how has this change been effected? More powerful 
energy has been infused into every class of society by means of in- 
dustry, by the suppression of the previous arbitrary and unpopular 



1 DC Joillies, p. 199. — 2. idem, p. 203. 



form of government , by the grant of individual liberty,, and the 
freedom allowed to intellectual development. 

" A long continuance of peace has afforded time for the fruits of 
industry to appear, to ripen, and to multiply. Wise legislation 
has broken down the barriers which stood in the way of freedom 
and personal liberty. The national intelligence has made good 
use of these favourable circumstances for accelerating its progress, 
and promoting its well-being; and a vigilant administration has, 
at the same time, secured for each individual the assistance and 
protection which good conduct and industry have a right to claim V- 

" The lesson of the illustrious Timer have not proved fruitless 
in Prussia. Most of his precepts and instructions are followed by 
intelligent disciples, and are becoming more extensively diffused. 

" Agriculture has received anew impulse. The King and the 
public functionaries bestow much attention upon this subject; 
rewards are offered ; agricultural schools are founded, and general 
meetings are held in all the provinces to discuss the best modes of 
labour, and to try their effects by experiment. The small landed 
proprietors attend these meetings, and are enabled practically to 
study agriculture at the model farms established for their benefit \" 

" In fifteen years, Prussia has expended a capital of 270,000,000 
francs in roads and railways ; yet, notwithstanding this outlay, and 
the additional capital employed in forming new industrial esta- 
blishments, the ordinary expenditure necessary for the well-being 
of the nation has been increased rather than diminished; and it 
has been possible so to economise this vast amount of wealth and 
productive labour, as to convert it into a fixed capital producing 
interest. In stating these facts, we have, we think, proved to de- 
monstration the industrial progress of Prussia. If industry proceeds 
steadily, without being forced by artificial excitement ( and this is 
the way in which it does proceed in Prussia, through the wise legis- 
lation of the government ), if manufacturers are becoming con- 
vinced that the best labour is that which is the best remunerated, 
then the rational development of industry, and the numerous op- 
portunities of making money which it affords, are valuable boons 
offered to the poor 3 . :> 

Hitherto we have been listening to the political economist ; let 
us now follow the traveller : Ci I came into Germany by Pihenish 
Prussia, which is undoubtedly the finest entrance. In my route 
from the frontier to Aix-la-Chapelle, I was struck with the beauty 
of the villages, which I saw scattered here and there in the midst of 

i. De Jonnes, p. 376. — 2. Idem, p. 419. — 3. Idem, pp. 428 to 430. 

16 



verdure and cultivation. The houses are well-built, and almost 
concealed by their thick covering of vine leaves. Each has its 
little garden tastefully laid out, and the people are seen passing to 
and fro, all looking healthy, and well-clad. There is here an 
ardent desire for improvement, and a greater degree of liberality 
of feeling and opinion than in other parts of Germany. The 
inhabitants ' of these localities are ready to give up their old 
prejudices, and to adopt modern ideas and civilisation. Nowhere 
in Germany does agricultural improvement proceed so rapidly, or 
with more complete success i . " 

(C I wish you could see these interesting villagers of Rhenish 
Prussia. Their bright, happy countenances, and their courteous 
manners, as well as their costume, which on both banks of the 
Rhine is particularly elegant and picturesque, all bespeak the 
contentment and comfort which reign among them. Every 
Prussian is obliged to serve in the army, and this circumstance 
contributes not a little to give to the country people that love of 
order and neatness which so characterises them. Happy the 
nation that is both agricultural and military ! Happy the subject 
who, after paying his debt of service to his country, can retire to 
the little plot of ground which his own hands have cultivated, and 
say 'This is mine!' 

" There are in Prussia some persons of wealth, very few poor, 
and not a single beggar; most of the people are in easy circum- 
stances. This is not the case in all the countries of Germany, nor, 
unhappily, in all the provinces; we must hope, however, that a 
time will come when every part will resemble, in this respect, the 
favoured country in which I am now travelling. 

" An exception must be made in favour of Prussia, with regard 
to the unfortunate measures which have led to the excessive divi- 
sion of property in Germany, and the consequent deterioration of 
estates. This is the only country beyond the Rhine which has 
endeavoured to prevent these ruinous results by a wise and bene- 
volent system of legislature. In Prussia, every town of any im- 
portance has its industrial school, and any lad, above the age of 14?, 
may prepare himself to become a good workman in any branch of 
art or manual labour. In these schools instruction is given prin- 
cipally in mathematics, mechanics, geometry, chemistry, geogra- 
phy, natural history, modern languages, religion, moral philoso- 
phy, drawing, and modelling 2 . " 



1. Jacquemin, pp. '6 and 4. — 2. idem, pp. 174 and 322. 



243 



It is not alone within her own sphere that the beneficial influence 
of Prussia is felt; it is extended to the neighbouring nations, and 
thus tends to make her the head of a great political German body. 

" Prussia daily increases the vast importance she has acquired 
in the midst of the Germanic States. Notwithstanding the antipa- 
thies of the inhabitants of the South, much distrust, and continual 
jealousy and ill-will, Berlin must be considered the true capital of 
Germany. Every movement in sentiment and opinion confirms 
the pre-eminence which that city has acquired. This is owing, not 
to the learning and celebrity of the University alone, nor to the 
intellectual and brilliant society found in Berlin, nor to the flou- 
rishing state of the arts, and the talented and influential aristocracy 
which Frederick William has gathered around him. The true 
mark of superiority which distinguishes Northern Germany is the 
stir, the life, and vigour found there, and the resolute and spirit- 
ed demands which are sent up thence to the King of Prussia. In 
proportion as the principles of the French Revolution extend beyond 
the Rhine, so must all the demands of modem mind and intellect 
find their way into Prussia; for the very life of intelligence and of 
philosophic culture has long centered in Northern Germany. To 
this spot where thought is vitally active, the efforts of all parties 
must be directed. What, indeed, could be demanded at Munich 
and at Vienna ? It was noble, after Iena, to exert so much mental 
force for the purpose of raising up the fallen Prussian monarchy; 
and it was wise and politic also. Never was thought freer and more 
powerful; and the result of this liberty was the resuscitation of a 
whole nation which was just about to become extinct. We well 
know the heroic period of the University of Berlin; the names of 
Fitche and of Hegel tell the whole. Now this free intellectual de- 
velopment must lead to important consequences. The destiny of 
Germany depends upon Prussia, and the more the spirit of the 
times gains strength in that country, the more incumbent will it 
be upon the Cabinet of Berlin to direct the newly-acquired liberty. 
There exists in Prussia, at least among a considerable portion of 
the community, a mass of general ideas, of noble sentiments, of 
w r ell-grounded expectations, which the events of each day serve to 
encourage and to strengthen. The present reigning power cannot 
repress the intellectual vigour of the Northern States ; those glo- 
rious petitions, those new demands which from day to day, and 
from hour to hour, are passing to the throne, must be complied 
with. All the poets have risen at the same time in every part of 
Germany ; but intellectual movements do not proceed so harmo- 



244 



niously as might be wished among the Germanic people. The 
progress of science and liberty varies in the country with the 
degrees of latitude, and the man of the south and the man of 
the north seldom meet in the same road of philosophy and free 
thought. How great is the distance from Vienna to Berlin ! 1 " 

Thus we have seen that liberal education, and freedom in every 
sense of the word, are the two pivots upon which the Prussian Mo- 
narchy turns, and that the happy results have been the prosperity 
of the people and the security of the State. Bat there is another 
point still more important for us to consider, viz : that the free and 
cordial reception of those principles, and also the prosperity which 
results from them, are the effects not of any particular concurrence 
of circumstances in Prussia, but of her Protestant Faith. This will 
appear when we discover, as we are about to do, the same effects in 
the various German States which profess that faith. Mirabeau shall 
be our first authority in laying down this universal principle : 
iC Evil, " says he, e - among Protestant nations, is only slight and 
transitory. Their religious system is the cause of this ; its require- 
ments do not stand in the way of any science; fair play is allowed 
to all. There is less evil under this religion than under that in 
which he who teaches that it is the earth which turns round, and 
not the sun, is in danger of imprisonment; and he who calls in 
question the historical accuracy of a chart favourable to the Church 
may possibly lose his life. Moreover, Luther and Calvin had the 
good sense to deny to their successors (clergy of their own party) 
the right of opening and shutting the gate of Heaven at their plea- 
sure, and have conceded that right to God alone. And herein lies 
the grand and important political distinction between Protestantism 
and Catholicism . The Protestant clergy can never exercise absolute 
or permanent power over any prince or governor. They could not 
blind him entirely to his own interest, and that interest is always 
closely connected with the progress of science, and the prosperity 
of the State, which are the natural results of toleration 2 . " 

" Berlin has become a refuge for many suffering from persecution, 
and may be said to be the centre of much truth. Nowhere can 
there be found a larger number of educated men in every class of 
society than in the States of the King of Prussia, and this is owing 
to the liberty allowed there to thought and opinion. The progress 
of literature has been highly favourable to industry and commerce. 
Half the proceeds of the German book-trade flows into the Exche- 

' 1. Taillsndier, pp. 134, 172, 212, — 2. Mirabeau, vol. 1. pp. 209. 210. 



quer of the Prussian States. Knowledge and intelligence have 
made rapid progress here in the last twenty years ; and the great 
blessing of toleration has not been confined to the Prussian States, 
but has spread throughout Protestant Germany. From Berlin, 
from the States of Frederick II, have emanated those rays which 
now enlighten the whole intellectual horizon 1 ." 

M. Cousin, in a work recently published, confirms the testimony 
of Mirabeau as to those provinces he has himself visited : " I have 
ascertained, " says this able writer, " by unequivocal proof, that 
general education has attained a high point in this country. Every- 
where, even in the smallest villages, I have seen numbers of little 
children, mostly of the lowest orders, dressed in the blue blouse, 
with a leathern belt round the waist, and carrying their slates and 
reading-books under their arms. The general system of instruction 
is grounded on the Bible, as translated by Luther, the catechism, 
and Scripture history; and every wise man will rejoice in this, 
for, with three-fourths of the population, morality can be instilled 
only through the medium of religion . Luther's forcible and popu- 
lar translation of the Bible is in circulation from one end of Ger- 
many to the other, and has greatly aided in the moral and religious 
education of the people 2 ." 

u In Saxe-Weimar, where there are as many schools as villages, 
and where every master is in easy circumstances, elementary edu- 
cation appears only as an inconsiderable sum in State expenditure. 
Not only do the schoolmasters receive a handsome stipend, but, 
when advanced in years, they retire upon a pension equal in 
amount to half their previous salary 3 . " 

te Twice in the year the masters of neighbouring villages meet to 
give an account of the systems they respectively pursue, and to re- 
port to one another the progress made. These amicable confer- 
ences tend to improve the systems adopted, and to diffuse more 
widely such methods of instruction as are found most efficient. 

" A reading society has been formed, by which every school- 
master is provided with the best journals, and the best works on 
the subject of education. These journals and books are circulated 
among the masters. The necessary funds for the society are sup- 
plied by contributions from the members themselves; or, if these 
are insufficient, assistance may be obtained from the funds of the 
commune, the church, or the general school treasury. There is a 
society of a similar kind for the pastors. Thus, it is by no means 



1. Mirabeau, vol. i, pp. 231 '.o 234. — 2. Cousin, pp, 2, 3, — 3, Cousin, pp. 24 to 29. 



246 



uncommon to find in the pastors and schoolmasters of the German 
villages men of extensive and solid acquirements. Education raises 
their position, and makes them persons of importance in their own 
spheres. 

{f Schoolmasters who are found to possess more zeal than learn- 
ing are allowed to visit the best neighbouring seminaries. Occa- 
sionally, they are even invited 'to pass some time in the great 
elementary school of Weimar, the best of all institutions of the 
kind. Here they have an opportunity of improving themselves by 
the lessons of the Normal School, which has also been established 
at Weimar, and which may be called the seminary for school- 
masters 1 ." 

({ Not only are all children above the age of seven years sent to 
school, but special schools are provided in every village for the 
infants also who are not old enough for the ordinary schools, and 
must, therefore, without such institutions, be neglected, while the 
parents are engaged in their daily labour. Such poor children, 
thus left to themselves, early acquire habits of idleness and va- 
grancy which it is difficult to eradicate in after life. An asylum 
has therefore been opened for them, to which they are sent by their 
parents in the morning, and from whence they are taken in the 
evening. Here they are fed and cared for, and instructed in read- 
ing, and in the first principles of religion. There is now not a 
single village in the Grand Duchy without its infant school, and 
such institutions are beginning to spread throughout Germany 2 . " 

ee I have myself become acquainted with the secret of the inge- 
nious solicitude of the Grand Duchess for the physical, intellectual, 
and moral benefit of the people. Public education seems to be the 
chief object of this truly paternal government. I shall never forget 
the two days I once spent at Weimar, in contemplating power 
and influence devoted to the sole object of promoting the improve- 
ment and happiness of mankind 3 . " 

The account of Saxony, taken from other authors, entirely 
agrees with what we have just quoted from M. Cousin : " Under 
the last sovereign of Saxony, whose justice and wisdom are univer- 
sally acknowledged, industry and commerce were stimulated and 
encouraged; agriculture was improved; the well-being of the 
middle and lower classes continually progressed; houses of correc- 
tion and of industry were founded; a refuge for vagrants and 
beggars was established at Roldetz ; hospitals were formed ; public 



1. Cousin, p. 47. — 2. Wem, p. 63. — 3. JcZem, p. 98. 



247 

education was better organised; military schools were instituted; 
the army itself was placed under regulations more suited to the 
exigencies of the times; national confidence was secured; and, 
lastly, the arts and sciences were encouraged and protected by the 
government 1 . Agriculture is carried in this country to a high 
degree of perfection, and is particularly favoured there. Neither 
has the animal kingdom denied its riches to Saxony; a great part of 
the revenue is derived from the breeding of sheep. The German 
spoken here is considered to be particularly pure. Nearly the 
whole of the population is Protestant. Saxony is one of the coun- 
tries of Germany in which intellectual cultivation is most attended 
to. Industry may be said to be innate, and it has accomplished 
great things. Trade, too, has made equal progress 2 . " 

ee Without possessing either the fertile soil or the genial climate 
of the Rhine, Saxony has attained to a certain degree of culture, 
civilisation, and prosperity. The towns are numerous, and most 
of them contain flourishing manufactories. Dresden, Nambourg, 
and especially Leipsic , take part in the great commercial enter- 
prises of Germany. In some districts, the villages are as close 
together as those of Wurtemberg and the Palatinate. Money cir- 
culates rapidly, and so much is gained from articles of consump- 
tion, that it is evident that the system of internal economy is good, 
and that there is a wise division of labour. The people are well- 
housed, well-clothed, and well-fed; and they are characterised by 
a love of order and a spirit of economy. Every class receives a 
suitable education, and the dialect spoken in the towns is the 
purest and most refined of Germany. In Saxony, the press is in 
active operation ; and the book trade is extensive and lucrative. 
The nature of the productions of the country, and the system of 
taxation, have given rise to industry in every kind of em- 
ployment. The cultivation of the fields, the working of mines, 
the tending of cattle, various manufactures, the exportation of 
merchandise, which is conveyed both by road and water to differ- 
ent parts of Germany, and commercial speculations, all these 
matters, in turn, occupy the inhabitants ; and the variety of em- 
ployment serves to sharpen their intellect, and to stimulate and 
draw out their ideas. 

" A concentrated and powerful administration was early formed 
in Saxony, directing the efforts of the inhabitants to one object, and 
establishiDg efficient protection; and arts and commerce, as well 



1. Dictionnaire dc la Conversation, article Saxe, p. 310. — 2. Idem, p. 313. 



248 



as the minds and manners of the people, have experienced the 
good effects of this administration. The evils of war and disease 
have been remedied by the wise applications and benevolent 
measures adopted by the government 1 . " 

From Saxony let us pass to Wurtemberg : ec Manufacturing in- 
dustry is of some importance in Wurtemberg, although an observer 
might, at first sight, be inclined to think the contrary. The inha- 
bitants themselves prepare the cloth, wool, leather, and iron 
utensils which they require . Isolated establishments, in which bu- 
siness is transacted on a more extensive scale, embrace every branch 
of industry in this country of manufactures. 

i: The inhabitants are physically strong, and of a vigorous con- 
stitution • morally, they are good-tempered, frank, open-hearted, 
industrious, honest, brave, and religious. As to their peculiar 
aptitude for the arts and sciences, let us only call to mind that 
Kepler, Schiller, et Wieland, were born among them. The pre- 
vailing religion is Lutheran. General education is the grand object 
of solicitude with the government 2 . " 

From Wurtemberg we will pass on to one of the free cities of 
Germany : £< At Hamburg, the victims of misfortune or of ill 
conduct are never seen in the streets, nor begging from door to 
door. In addition to the asylums founded many years ago for the 
relief of the indigent class, a model institution has been more re- 
cently established. 

" The higher classes have united in the generous design of pro- 
viding for the poor, in such a manner as to render them useful as 
long as they are capable of employment. Under the direction of 
the police, the city has been divided into sections and districts, 
correct accounts are drawn up of those who need relief, stating 
their age, occupation, and character. Those who are unable to 
work obtain relief proportionate to their need ; and the rest are pro- 
vided with occupation, either at their own homes, or in a general 
workshop. Beggars and vagrants are taken to a house of industry, 
where they are well treated, but obliged to work. A system of 
this kind involves a variety of details; such as apportioning re- 
lief , appointing work, retaining part of the profits for the augmen- 
tation of the general fond , and the care of the children of the poor; 
to all of which the managers elevate themselves with intelligent 
and disinterested benevolence. 

" The founding of this institution has produced the commence- 



1, Calteail, Vol. IT, pp. 1 to 5. —2. pictionnaire de la Conversation , article Wurlemberg, p. 426. 



249 



ment of a new era in Germany ; and in other countries, inquiries are 
now anxiously made respecting it, with a view to the formation of 
similar establishments elsewhere. At Copenhagen, Stockholm, 
London, and Paris, benevolent and enlightened men are in corre- 
spondence with the directors of the Hamburg institution ; and the 
details of its operations, published in the papers, have attracted the 
attention of the public l . " 

" The environs of Hamburg are almost as thickly populated as the 
city itself. Here are seen a number of pleasant villas, shaded by 
avenues of trees ; beyond, are flourishing villages, the inhabitants 
of which are occupied in the cultivation of vegetables and fruit. 
The riches and activity of the people of Hamburg have extended to 
the neighbouring districts belonging to Holstein, producing there 
also an equal abundance of the necessaries and comforts of life. 
Art has overcome the disadvantages of climate ; and sandy soil, and 
barren and marshy ground, have all yielded to the efforts of man V 

To ascertain whether this prosperity results from the soil, or is 
brought about by men, we must inquire what these reformed Ger- 
mans are, when removed from their own country. 

" The city of Hermanstadt, the capital of Transylvania, is 
peopled by Saxons. They are distinguished from the aborigines 
by the superior degree of comfort which they enjoy, the conse- 
quence of their industry and sobriety. Their neat, well-built 
cottages, give an air of cheerfulness to the district they inhabit. 
Most of them profess the Lutheran religion 3 . " 

In order that we may better understand what religion can effect, 
let us take a view of a little society formed under the influence of 
Christian principles : " What devotion exceeds that rendered to 
God by men whose sole object is to benefit their fellow creatures, 
and to spend their lives in doing good ! The associations of the Mo- 
ravian Brethren are perfectly free; they are restrained by no vows; 
everything done among them is voluntary ; and yet they are bound 
together by one common interest. Their villages are remarkable 
for cleanliness, and for the good order and harmony of the inhabi- 
tants. Their affairs are transacted with so much quietness and 
silence that, in passing along the road, we might imagine the village 
to be empty and deserted! The members of the commission who 
superintended the establishments of the community, perform their 
duties with that spirit of zeal and patience which a sense of the 
sacred obligations of religion never fails to produce in the mind. 



i. Catteau, \ol. i, p. 60. — 2. Tiem, p. 70. — 3. Marcel die Sevres, vol. in', p. 9. 



250 



The heads of the community are not distinguished above the rest, 
even in rank. But what privilege is equal to that of being useful to 
others ? When a brother has been elected head of the community 
or member of the commission five times in succession, the oldest or 
most respected person in the district declares his services before 
the assembled congregation, and each one salutes him with the title 
of beloved brother. This, with the testimony of his own con- 
science, is the only recompense he receives for his labours. The 
more distinguished nations of Europe, amongst whom honour is 
less prized than pecuniary reward, may learn a useful lesson from 
such an example. There is one remarkable circumstance which 
proves that the institutions of the Moravian Brethren are founded 
upon a knowledge of the human heart, and that they rest upon a 
solid basis, viz. : that during the whole period of their existence it 
has never been necessary to banish a member from the society: 
other slight punishments are inflicted, but for offences so trivial 
that they would scarcely be noticed in any other community. 

" An endeavour has been made to establish perfect equality 
among the members who live together, and the most complete 
concord; and indeed a delightful spirit of harmony reigns in 
this holy brotherhood, in the course of my travels, I have visited 
several of these communities; and have seen in all of them so 
much love and union, that I mi g lit be tempted to adopt their mode 
of living myself, were not certain dogmas professed by the Mora- 
vians opposed to my own religious tenets. 1 have also been admit- 
ted into the houses of some of the married brethren, who have 
establishments of their own, and here also I have observed the 
same calmness, and the same serenity. They all receive the tra- 
veller and the stranger with kindness and hospitality, and tell him 
with honest simplicity how happy they have been since they join- 
ed this society of peace and love. In the midst of the desolation 
which so long spread over Europe, how delightful to find one 
little spot of earth where wise men, united together by the same 
sentiment, that of love to their fellow creatures, could pass the 
brief years of life in harmony and peace ! 

" Christians, the Moravian Brethren revive in their community 
the simplicity of the Church in early times, and present an example 
of true piety to the world. Their whole system may be called a 
theocracy, for everything is done among them for the honour and 
sake of religion. This Church seems to be governed by an invi- 
sible power. The oldest and most respected member of the com- 
munity exercises the principal functions of the ministry, and when 



251 

he feels that another is better qualified than himself to fulfil these 
sacred duties, he requests him, in the name of his brethren, to 
speak to them of God. The first time that I went among these good 
Brethren, I felt myself surrounded by pious recluses, whose only 
occupations were works of usefulness, and the service of God. True 
representations of the early Christian Church, their communities 
show us what sacrifices can be made from the love of truth, and 
how example may win men over to habits of order and justice. 
In the present day, these societies are so perfect, that all the mem- 
bers belonging to them seem to possess the same gentleness and 
goodness ; and, wonderful as it may appear, all in nearly the same 
degree V 

We will now take a view of these Reformed Germans in distant 
colonies : 

" The Sclavonians of Hungary are half Germanised. They are 
superior to other Hungarians in education and civilisation. They 
have, in conjunction with the Saxons, instructed the Magyars in 
agriculture. The greater number have embraced the Reformed 
religion. They are active and enterprising, and well-fitted for any 
kind of employment V 

" The Saxons of the south-east of Hungary are Lutherans; they 
are well known to be industrious and mercantile citizens, and hard- 
working and contented labourers. They are all free, and live upon 
their own lands. They have suffered much from the jealousy of 
the Magyar nobles, who have endeavoured to enslave them by 
violence and fraud. They are greatly superior to their neighbours 
in education and activity; and they enjoy all the comforts of life 3 . * 

" Many German colonies now formed in Bohemia were at first 
attracted thither by the mineral riches of the country, as well as by 
the invitations of the government, and they have exercised a bene- 
ficial influence upon the original inhabitants Be it remember- 
ed that these colonies came from Saxony, and that they are Protest- 
ant. " At the commencement of the last century, the country 
of Saltzbourg lost about 30,000 of its inhabitants. These were 
Protestants who had long begged for liberty of conscience, but 
in vain. In consequence of the cruel persecution to which they 
were subjected, they at last determined to abandon their homes. 
They were kindly received by several princes, especially by the 
King of Prussia, who established them in Lithuania. There they 
have cultivated a large extent of land which had been depopulated 

1. Marcel de Serres, pp. 131 to 142. — 2. Rougeniont, p. 376. — 3. Mem, pp. 378, 379. — 
4. Idem, p. 364. 



252 



by the plague * it now produces, as the result of their labours, 
abundant harvests, and is again covered with cattle and farms 1 /' 

(C A colony of thirty or fourty thousand persons came into this 
country, and gradually formed agricultural and mercantile esta- 
blishments which continue to prosper. Russia is indebted in a great 
measure to these strangers for the advance she has made in agricul- 
ture, in arts, trade, commerce, and science. The indefatigable 
industry of the United Brethren on the banks of the Volga has 
led to the establishments of large manufactories among the Kal- 
moucks and Cossacks, which supply silks, cotton, cloth, woollen 
goods, and a great quantity of tobacco V 

" Most European nations who have gone to the New World have 
introduced there turmoil and oppression. It should be mentioned, 
to the praise of the Germans, that they have appeared in America 
only as benefactors, bringing with them useful arts, honesty, and 
good principles. A great part of the Northern States of America 
owes to them the prosperity there enjoyed. We learn from the 
testimony of travellers that the localities in which they have settled 
are remarkable for the cleanliness of the habitations, and the cul- 
tivated state of the land 3 ." 

"To avoid the danger of inundations, the inhabitants of Harburg 
construct their houses upon elevations, and surround their fields 
with dikes. Notwithstanding this disadvantage, the low lands are 
exceedingly valuable; they are the most fertile districts of Western 
Germany. In the nature of the soil, they resemble some provinces 
of Holland, and they have the same rich cultivation; the produce 
is even greater, and the general aspect of the country more varied. 
There are few cities in the country, but a large number of towns, 
villages, and farms. Most of the villages have ornamented walks of 
elms and willows; and cleanliness, comfort, and contentment are 
everywhere visible. Agriculture is in the highest consideration, 
it being the most profitable pursuit, and one not subjected to the 
burdens of feudal servitude. The inhabitants have always re- 
sisted this yoke, and have made the greatest sacrifices to preserve 
their personal and territorial liberty. These rich farmers, at- 
tached to home, and fond of retirement, have always had a taste 
for reading : many historical and moral works may be found in 
their dwellings, but neither poetry nor romances 4 ." 

Such is Prussia, with her train of Protestant states, and in her 
colonies. Now let the reader call to mind the picture given by the 

1. CaHcau, vol. i, p. 104 and following. — 2. Idem, pp. 94 to 96. — 3. Idem, p. 98. — 
4. Idem, pp. 104 to 107. 



same writers of Austria, Bavaria, and the Southern Popish parts 
of Germany, and let him declare impartially which side bears 
away the palm of material , intellectual, and moral superiority? 
We do not wish ourselves to say a word in reply. In what has 
already been stated, we have allowed facts to speak for themselves, 
and we will still listen to others. The contrast between the Ca- 
lliolic South and the Protestant North of Germany is so striking, that 
most travellers have been, as it were, forced to remark on it. Let 
us inquire into their verdict , see if they are unanimous, and if the 
reader will coincide with them after studying the facts we have 
disclosed. 

Let us first notice from statistical figures. ^Ye copy from a work 
by the learned Quetelet, entitled Researches on the Propensity to 
Crime : 

Number of inhabitants to one crime against. 
Person. Property. 



/"Dalmatia 535 625 

(Gallicia and Bukovina 3,955 1,470 

Tyrol 5,707 1,492 

H < Moravia and Silesia 12,662 2,689 

I I Interior Austria (Gratz, Leibach, Trietz) 13,311 2,188 

[ Lower Austria 17,130 1,382 

V Bohemia 18,437 1,881 

(Prussia 22,741 639 

Saxony 27,588 697 

Posen 31,440 . 875 

x Silesia 33,714 1,086 

« j Westphalia 38,436 1,045 

' r Brandeburg 39,486 688 

VPomerania 92,121 1,533" 



From this table let us deduce the results affecting our subject. 
If we take the average among the States governed respectively 
by Austria and Prussia, we shall have : 

For the Catholic monarch). 

10,2l8 inhabitants to one crime against persons. 
1,675 — — property. 

11,923 

For the Protestant monarchy. 

40,789 inhabitants to one crime against persons. 
937 — — property. 

41,726 

The proportion of 11,923 to -41,726 is nearly as 1 to 4. Thus, 
with due regard to the numerical difference of population, we have 
in the countries subjected to Austria nearly four times as many 
crimes as in those governed by Prussia. 



254 



The relative amount of instruction is noted by another statisti- 
cian : "In Prussia, the number of students is as 4 to 6 § inhabi- 
tants ; in Austria, 1 to 10 *. " 

Thus, the condition of Protestant Prussia, compared with Catho- 
lic Austria, is, four times less crime, and nearly twice as much in- 
struction. This is proved by incontrovertible statistics; but, for 
further details, let us examine the reports of the travellers. 

We will return to the authors already quoted. Mirabeau shall 
speak for his time, and Marcel de Serres for ours. This is the 
opinion of the former as to Austria : " It is a fact, as melancholy as 
it is singular and remarkable, that precisely in those countries 
where natural beauties most abound, there the powers of the hu- 
man mind are most strictly circumscribed, and that this unhappy 
state is attributable solely to the prevalence of superstition. 

" Here is briefly the spectacle presented by Germany. Govern- 
ed by a variety of rulers, a diversity of mind is necessarily mani- 
fest. In the first parts of this extensive portion of the European 
continent, superstition closes every approach to liberty of thought, 
and consequently to the knowledge and happiness it procures. 
Those less favoured by Nature materially are distinguished by moral 
power, and by the industry and activity which it engenders, and by 
which they can indemnise themselves for what their climate 
refuses. Inquire whether there be as many good physicians in a 
country where ignorance and superstition abound, as in one where 
knowledge and liberty of thought prevail. 

"See in what country beggars are the most numerous ; where 
the natural strength of man is turned to the best account; where 
fewest crimes are committed. Look at these things, and decide. 

"Nature has favoured Bohemia far more than Pomerania; if then 
we find in the latter more prosperity, if the labouring and still more 
the middle classes are in easier circumstances, as we have shown 
to be probable, to what can we attribute this singular difference, if 
not to the strength of superstition, the absence of knowledge, and 
the evils of a vicious legislation ? The comparison of Pomerania 
and Bohemia proves even more than we expected; for Protestant 
labourers do much more work than Romanists, who have at least 
thirty more holidays in the year. 

" Protestantism, being founded on freedom of thought and the 
right of private judgment in religious matters, which judgment is 
formed by individual study of the Holy Scriptures, is generally 



1. Schnitzler, vol. n. p. 353. 



255 



found conducive to liberty. Catholicism entails many political 
evils, the chief of which is the necessary mental subjection to the 
pleasure of one who arrogates to himself the right to say : hitherto 
thou shalt go, and no further, and who can call on the government 
to enforce his decision. 

" The system of monkhood has hitherto been considered one of 
the greatest evils of Popery, and doubtless it is highly undesirable 
in the present state of religious communities, for it absorbs a large 
number of individuals physically well constituted for usefulness, 
who, though rendering little service to society, still live at its 
expense, and that alone is a heavy tax. The void in a population 
caused by war, pestilence, or emigration, is soon refilled by men's 
tendency to multiply. But the gap of monkhood is of a different 
kind. There is nothing to replace; the human being is still there; 
he has simply become useless. He even becomes pernicious, 
because he submits all his faculties to the domination of a man 
unconcerned in the political constitution; because he permits this 
man to mould him to his will; and especially because, as a monk, 
he increases the mass of superstition by which the people are 
oppressed. 

v Amongst the heaviest exactions of this oppression, are the 
contributions which the regular clergy receive through the begging 
friars. To be better off in the next world, or to be able to indulge 
favourite sins without remorse, people deprive themselves of ne- 
cessaries, and pay the priest. They neglect the true means of 
remedying the ills which threaten or befall them, and give them- 
selves up to the influence of devilish illusions, exorcisms, 
amulets, etc., for which they pay largely. In fact, they are kept in 
brutish ignorance, in order that they may never escape from 
slavery, nor attempt its alleviation. 

u There is nothing of this kind with Protestants. On the 
contrary, it is almost impossible that a Protestant villager should 
fulfil his religious duties without knowing how to read : every 
candidate for confirmation is required to possess a Bible and cate- 
chism, because the pastor is not considered as the only mediator 
between God and man. In Popish countries, the monk, whether 
regular or secular, takes entire charge of all matters relating to 
salvation. Thus, in most of these countries, knowing how to read 
is the exception, whereas in Protestant lands it is the rule i . " 

Ci In Upper Corinthia, in order to deter people from Protestant- 



1. Mirabeau vol. vm, pp. 48 to 57. 



ism, the priests barred the entrance of knowledge by closing {he 
schools, under pretence of the inutility of learning to country folks; 
indeed of its danger, for if they knew how to read they might be 
found handling heretical books. The consequence is, that not one 
in a hundred knows his letters, and the most advanced read badly. 
Being able to read was, at one time, regarded as certain proof of 
heresy; so much so, that men who had mastered this unusual ac- 
quirement positively pretended entire ignorance of it 1 . " 

"Countrymen, and even countrywomen, who do not know how 
to read and write, are much more rare in Germany, especially 
among Protestants, than in France, where, in many respects, 
greater liberty prevails. Start from Constantinople, cross Hungary, 
go to Vienna (Popish places) and from thence by Prague to Dresden; 
on your way buy books and mathematical instruments; seek out 
the fittest men to instruct you on any subject, or physical or mecha- 
nical science, and count up the cities where, during your journey 
across this vast extent of fully inhabited and much frequented 
country, you find facilities for satisfying yourself in this respect. 
Resume your journey. Go from Dresden to Meissen, Leipsic, Wei- 
mar, Iena, Erfurt, Gotha-Gcettingen, Brunswick, Luneburg, Ham- 
burg (Protestant places). Try these towns by the same standard, 
and then pronounce your verdict 2 . " 

"The professors of literature in Protestant Germany are infi- 
nitely better informed than those of Catholic Germany, and have 
furnished many more distinguished men. The Prussian colleges 
have benefited by the freedom permitted to thinking and writing. 
All have taken advantage of the light lately thrown on the subject 
of education, while in many other countries there is more specu- 
lation without result; people, priests, and government striving who 
shall most effectually exclude knowledge 3 . " 

" There are two distinct parties in Germany. The endeavour of 
one is to bring the whole of this vast country under the dominion 
of one Sovereign. It may be called the Austrian, or Popish party. 
The other must be truly named the Protestant, or Prussian party; 
and it embraces all who love civil and political liberty, and freedom 
of thought, and who desire to bestow these blessings on all men. 
What the Protestants have to dread, is the constant, secret, and 
cunning machination of the priests, chiefly the monks, and above 
all, the Jesuits. When we see the Pope thanking the kings of 
Spain and Portugal and the Duke of Parma for having preserved the 



1. Mirabcau, VOl. VIII, p. 100. — 2. Idem, vol. VI, p. 356. — 3. Idem, pp. 139, 146. 



Inquisition, we may be excused for doubting whether tolerance be 
compatible with Catholicism *. " 

In Mr. Schloetzer's journal it is stated that a dispute on a new 
system of education having arisen in the presence of the Empress, 
the Superior of a religious order in great favour at Court said thus : 
"If your Majesty allows of this new method of study, which will 
enlighten and elevate the people, all religion will certainly be de- 
stroyed ; but if your Majesty wishes to support religion, which is the 
first consideration, you must leave these things on the old footing, 
and not corrupt men by inculcating philosophical or licentious 
ideas, for then they will believe nothing 2 . " 

ic If German literature were more known, it would readily prove 
the immense difference there is in this matter between Popish and 
Protestant Germany. It is true that the large town of Vienna has, 
by means of its wealth, factored some arts and sciences in a higher 
degree than most of the Romish states of Germany. The large 
number of strangers who visit it may also contribute to this result. 
But, generally speaking, instruction is far less widely spread than 
even in the smaller Protestant towns. M . Nicolai cites some curious 
instances of this ; we will only give one, which is that the titles of 
the books approved by the public censor are printed with palpable 
proofs of the grossest ignorance 3 . " 

" The clever men occasionally sent forth by the Austrian States 
are striking chiefly in comparison with the disgraceful ignorance 
which prevails in the other Popish parts of Germany. In fact, one 
cannot deny that, whether from timidity or prej udice, they do not 
rise to the clearness and conciseness manifest in the philosophical 
ideas of Protestant men of letters. The result is the same when we 
compare the people of the two countries. In Protestant Germany, 
they are much more generally instructed *. " 

" In proof of the bad state of the colleges, M. Nicolai mentions 
the style of books published for their use. He says, if any one 
would give himself the trouble of examining these, he would soon 
see how much their authors had yet to learn. They send forth the 
most wretched trash, except when they copy, in the most impudent 
manner, from Protestant writers, as, for instance, Busching for 
geography, and Schroeckh for universal history. As to Schroeckh, 
they have transcribed his work, word for word, both at Vienna and 
Wurtzburg; in short, wherever it was not judged indispensable that 
history should have a Popish bias. It is needless to describe more 

1. Mirabcail, VOl. VIII, pp. 128 to 132. — 2. h:nn , p. 138. ~ 3. Idem, p. 152. — 4. Idem, 
p. 175. 

17 



258 



fully the universities of Vienna. Let facts speak for themselves in 
this matter. Where are the literary men of Austria ? Men known 
in the world of letters, and held in esteem by foreigners, as are 
Ernesti, Heyne. Kayt, Feder, etc., in the universities and towns of 
Protestant Germany ? Let the cities of Catholic Germany be examin- 
ed; take particular note of the universities of Vienna, Prague, 
Wurtzburg, Cologne, etc. ; we do not name that of Mayence, because 
the small number of distinguished men it contains, such as Muller 
and Soemmering, are Protestants, and have been brought from Pro- 
testant Germany, where they were educated. Where are the cele- 
brated men, really valuable writers, who have been formed in these 
universities ? Will their number bear the most distant comparison 
with the same class in Protestant Germany ? At the close of the 
eighteenth century, Mr. de Sonnenfels announced the formation of 
a literary society. Amongst its members, the good writers who 
were the objects of emulation were all Protestants ; this inscription 
was placed over their work: Behold those whom you should seek 
to imitate, if you would be Germans in mind as well as by birth. 
To prove that the German language is capable of every variety of 
style, he quotes a large number of authors, exclusively Protestant. 
If there had been one in Austria, or even in any part of Catholic 
Germany, M. de Sonnenfels would assuredly have named him. 
The refined language of these young men was in Vienna ironically 
called Lutheran German. M. de Sonnenfels himself relates that a 
person of rank to whom he was introduced for the purpose of re- 
questing some employment, and to whom be wished, in proof of his 
capacity, to offer some printed compositions of bis own, said in an 
abrupt manner : ' I think you are a Lutheran; at any rate your 
German is. What, an author ! No, sir, you are too learned for 
my office V " 

" Protestant Germany certainly reverences Berlin as the place 
where true liberty of the press prevails, and as the residence of 
a number of eminent literary men, but no decided supremacy in 
literature or science can be allowed her. Men of first-rate talent 
are scattered over the whole surface of Protestant Germany, and 
this is no slight advantage of the Germanic Confederation and the 
Protestant system. In general society in Vienna, one may meet 
some truly learned men, a few enlightened persons ; but in Pro- 
testant Germany, all of any position in society, all literary men, 
all public functionaries, are thoroughly educated and well inform* 



l. Mirabeau, vol. vin. pp. 207 to -ill. 



259 

ed. The portrait of the University of Vienna, given by Nicola'i, is 
not flattering, but it is nothing compared with what we read in 
Schlcetzer, and some authors who have spoken of it : 

" The students are idle, in imitation of the professors; a very 
small number attend any classes not absolutely necessary to teach 
them a profession, or where the testimony of the professor is not 
required to enable them to procure employment: 217 students 
follow the lectures of Mr. Meyer on logic, metaphysics, and moral 
philosophy, in which the old and inefficient system of Baumeister 
is adopted, and only 6 attend M. Scharf, who follows Feder's 
plan, which is a thousand times better. There are only A students 
in the higher class of geometry, and 6 in that of Universal History. 
Seger has 16 auditors for geography, Mastalier 8 for his course of 
literature, and Hasslinger 12 for oratory. Further, it is noticed 
that the number of students in jurisprudence diminishes annually, 
and that statistics are, at present, entirely deserted. De Sonnen- 
fels has 63 hearers for his lessons on political economy, a number 
explained by the fact that these lectures, being formerly quite 
unattended, the learned man obtained an imperial decree, which 
forbade any one obtaining employment who had not followed his 
lectures *. " 

" Judging by those who leave the University of Prague, it is the 
only one which contains truly enlightened men, and who convey 
verbally important principles ; but they dare not write, and some 
unknown cause acts as a check to their activity. Be this as it 
may, these universities cannot be compared with those of Protest- 
ant Germany which are at all well spoken of 2 . " 

" We have not been able to procure the details we desired on 
the subject of Austrian legislation. Protestant Germany being 
almost exclusively the seat of learning, no work of general utility 
ever appears in the Popish States, and the few books which do 
emanate from them circulate amongst the inquisitive few, as they 
are very difficult to be obtained 3 . *' 

Does this contrast between North and South Germany continue 
to the present day? Marcel de Serres will tell us : u In the 
North of Germany, titles of nobility are more fairly appreciated 
than in the South. In the former, a man is valued more for 
what he is himself than for his titles, which he owes less to merit 
than to fortune; there it is rarely forgotten that true nobility is in 
the soul. However, these prerogatives better suit the German 



1. Mirabeau, vol. yiii, pp. 213 to 220. — 2. UM\ p, 223. — 3; U< m, pi 226. 



200 

nation than any other, on account of their characteristic gravity. 
The universities of the North of Germany have enlightened the 
people concerning the political institutions which most deserve 
their respect, and have contributed to lessen the severity and 
harshness of feudal rights. , Feudal servitude still exists in some 
provinces of Austria, where the progress of knowledge is not yet 
fully influential, but it daily loses its more oppressive features, 
and will probably, ere long, be entirely abolished. In Southern 
Germany, before the establishment of academies at Munich and 
Landshut, there did not exist a single university of the least 
celebrity ; it is well known, on the contrary, what brilliancy the 
Universities of Gottingen and Halle have cast on- the North of Ger- 
many, and the influence these great establishments have exercised 
in the promotion of knowledge. In Austria, where no literary 
emulation exists, literary merit is little esteemed, because it is 
feared it might enfeeble military ardour; in truth, it is evident 
that literary honours cannot be held in much respect where modern 
European learning has only yet half penetrated. Such titles are 
even despised, because there are none capable of sustaining them, 
and that genius is considered of far less value than high birth. The 
people of Nothern Germany, on the contrary, are passionately fond 
of reading, and any pamphlet even, which excites attention, is im- 
mediately in the hands of every one. In Austria, neither the me- 
chanic nor the labourer care for books or discussions that have no 
bearing on their own immediate interests l /' 

C( We have already noticed that what gives literary men in 
Northern Germany an influence they would not possess elsewhere, 
is the demand for political writings by all classes of society 2 . " 

" A stranger finds more pleasure in the society of Northerm Ger- 
many than in that of the South. The aristocracy and great people 
of the land mix more freely with literary men, and both classes 
must profit by this intercourse. The nobles of the North are not 
satisfied with merely seeking the society of literary characters; there 
are amongst the i n many who have distinguished themselves in the 
higher walks of literature, and think themselves honoured thereby. 
Princes and Sovereigns have rivalled each other in their attempts to 
give to the study of letters the distinction it claims from a civilised 
State. Thus, some little town which would otherwise have been 
unknown to fame, has acquired celebrity by the learned men it has 
produced. Gotha, Weimar, and Gottingen have alike become 



1. Marcel de Serres, vol. in, pp. 193 to 197. — 2. idem, p. 203. 



261 

the Athens of the North, and the centre of instruction to a great 
part, of Europe. In a short time, the same will he said of Munich. 
The illustrious men whom a generous Sovereign has there gathered 
around him (we have seen they came from Protestant Germany), 
will soon render the cultivation of literature general in a country 
where it seemed unknown, and will annihilate for ever the re- 
proaches on this subject, to which the people of Southern Germany 
are now liable *. " 

" The nobles of Northern Germany have not forgotten, as many 
do, their social position. They have not given themselves up to 
tempting vices, unrestrained pleasures, or the easy duties of a pri- 
vate life, but have always maintained a dignity suitable to their 
rank. The habits and customs of German families attract the at- 
tention of a stranger, and inspire him with respect for a nation 
which has so successfully rejected innovations. 

" When a young man distinguishes himself amid his zealous 
co-disciples, the nobles and great people eagerly offer facilities for 
the prosecution of his studies. The Universities of Gottingen and 
Halle are full of such young men, who, thanks to a generous benevo- 
lence, are at liberty to follow the profession of letters, in which 
they hope one day to distinguish themselves. And, what is not less 
remarkable in a country where birth is so highly esteemed, they 
are treated as equals by those lords and princes who throng the 
Universities, and who, like them, are completing their studies. 
Thus, in the same enclosure, are trained those who are to govern 
men, and those who by the strength of reason are to enlighten 
them. This daily intercourse gives rise to those first friendships, 
which are the strongest of all, and which have a certain influence 
on different classes of society. 

iS Essentially a methodical people, they have always thought 
that nothing could be efficiently taught, unless in a systematic 
and orderly manner. It is to this regularity and method that 
are greatly due the universal information and profound learning 
which have in every age distinguished the Germans. Who in 
France does not know that the learned man who astonishes Europe 
with the variety and extent of his acquirements, obtained them at 
the Universities, where every branch of human learning is unfolded 
in the clearest manner ? In favour of the German Universities, we 
might also instance the chief of our French naturalists, who, after 
having received from them the first stimulus to his fine talents, 



1. Marcel de Serres, \ol. in, p. 241. 



262 



lately proclaimed liis admiration of the northern institutions before 
the official body charged to promote education amongst ourselves 1 ." 

As yet the authors we have quoted have only mentioned the supe- 
riority of Protestant over Catholic Germany in general knowledge and 
intelligence : let us add a few words on some other points : 

Superiority in Industrial Activity. — ec The cultivation of flax in 
the North of Germany is a source of subsistence to a whole nation; 
it employs all the spare moments which would otherwise be lost, 
affords a means of usefulness to old people, and preserves a whole 
country from idleness and its attendant evils V 

Malte-Brun generalises this observation : " The people of North- 
ern Germany feed on potatoes, butter, and cheese, with the addi- 
tion of beer ; are healthy, frugal, and enlightened ; it is there that 
Protestantism gains most proselytes. The people of Southern Ger- 
many, luxurious in their mode of life, accustomed to wine, even 
to excess, are more lively, but also more superstitious. In North- 
ern Germany, the multitude of dwellings, the villages ornamented 
with fountains, the clean and well-kept houses, the good roads 
bordered with fruit trees, and the well-cultivated fields, all be- 
speak the intelligence and prosperity of the inhabitants V The in- 
dustrial superiority brings in its train, as Malte-Brun says, greater 
material comfort : <( There are in Munich 4,275 recognised 
beggars, who confess to living solely on alms ; and above 3,000 per- 
sons who receive it. In 1 785, there were hardly above 6,400 persons 
in Berlin who received public aid, and not a single beggar; thus, in 
proportion to the population, there are double the number of poor at 
Munich than at Berlin V 

Superiority in Morals. — u In Protestant Germany crime is very 
rare. Everywhere, out of the large towns, you can travel in 
safety in any costume. The inhabitants on leaving a house do not 
shut it up, but simply place a stick across the doorway, as a sign 
that no one is within, and this intimation is sacredly respected, as 
is often seen in Westphalia. The few thieves and robbers one meets 
with are either deserters ; perhaps some miserable Jews, condemned 
by long persecution to support themselves by theft; or natives of 
the Popish provinces, where the people are not nearly so happy, so 
industrious, or so diligent, and where the number of holydays in- 
duces idle habits V 

Superiority in National Wealth and Financial Administration. 
— " The errors of the Sovereigns of Saxony have not thrown the 

1. Marcel de Serres, vol. iv, pp. 22 to 28. — 2. Mirabeau, vol. n, p. 202. — 3. Malte-Brun, 
liv. 86, p. 74(0. — 4. Mirabeau, VOl. VIII, p. 342. — 5. Idem, pp, 202 to 206. 



country into such an abyss of debt as in Bavaria. The amount of 
debt was less ; the population, and above all the national capital, 
was much larger in Saxony, even immediately after the war 
of 1763. A noble result of enlightened knowledge! This is the 
secret of the immense resources of Saxony, and which has enabled 
her to repair more recent though almost as great, losses. Bavaria 
is at present so profoundly plunged in the darkuess of superstition 
and ignorance, that it is difficult to foresee the means by which she 
can be rescued 1 

Lastly, Superiority even in Language. — if Protestants having been 
the first to write with intelligence, and consequently with correct- 
ness, the language used in the enlightened parts of Germany, this 
pure style is, in the countries subject to Austria, called Lutheran 
German 2 . " 

It is most remarkable that this superiority should be so conspi- 
cuous within the limits of the same nation. We have seen it in 
Ireland, where the Northern Presbyterians contrast with the Western 
Romanists; we have seen it in Switzerland, where the district of 
Morat, in the Canton of Fribourg, is as an oasis in the desert; we 
shall now see it in Prussia. In Ireland and Switzerland we per- 
ceived one brilliant spot in the midst of darkness; here we shall 
find one dark spot in the midst of light. And this, because in Ire- 
land and Fribourg we were in Popish countries, while in Prussia 
the prevailing religion is Protestantism. Listen to M. Cousin : 
ff In Prussia there are both Protestant and Romish normal schools. 
In general, the discipline of the Romish schools, without being pre- 
cisely relaxed, is less strict than that of the Protestants. The system 
of these last is almost too severe; if, indeed, discipline can ever be 
too strict with young men from 16 to 22 years of age. Experi- 
ence has proved that young men cannot be secluded for two or three 
years with impunity, unless a strong religious spirit prevails 
amongst them, and they are kept to their studies by strict rules. 
Regulations regarding study differ little in the normal schools of the 
two communities ; nevertheless, these are more severe among the 
Protestants, and it may be said that, in general, their schools are su- 
perior to those of the Romanists. It is only natural that the insti- 
tutions of the less enlightened provinces, such as the Polish, West- 
phalian, and Rhenish, should manifest the condition of their country, 
while the superior civilisation of the central provinces bestows on 
their schools a prosperity which these very results tend yearly to 



l. Mirabeau, vol. hi, p. 360. — 2. idem, vol. vu, p. 483. 



264 



increase. When we enter a normal school in Saxony or Branden- 
burg, we cannot hut be struck with the admirable order and strict 
discipline which prevail here, as in the Prussian barracks, while 
freedom and love of study are plainly visible l . " 

Is it for want of religious guides that Popish Germany is inferior to 
Protestant Germany? Alas, no : it is not the number which is in fault- 
It is the only point on which Mirabeau gives it precedence : " Nicolai 
remarks that at Berlin, amongst 140,000 souls, there are only 140 
clerical personages; consequently, in comparison with Munich, 
where there are 1,150 ecclesiastics for a population of 33,500, the 
proportion of this profession is as 1 to 31 ; besides, in Berlin, the 
ministers of religion are married, and have children, whom they 
carefully train up as useful subjects of the State 2 . " 

If then there be no lack of spiritual guides in the Romish Church 
in Germany, what is it that is still wanting? It is the possession 
of religious truth ; for it is this truth which has emancipated Pro- 
testant Germany. Yes, the Reformation of the sixteenth century 
is the cause of the prosperity of Northern Germany, a point we are 
just about to prove. But, even here, we will allow the witness of 
the same authors : " It was only after the Reformation that the 
advantages of the University of Leipsic (Protestant), were developed. 
A remarkable fact, which proves the efficacy of the Reformation in 
promoting knowledge, is the excessive difference between the Uni- 
versities of Leipsic and Prague. The latter has not yet emerged 
from obscurity; and Bohemia, which continues in a truly singular 
state of barbarism, has not derived any benefit from it, while the 
University of Leipsic has not only produced many first-rate literary 
men, but has elevated Saxony to a degree of civilisation which has 
had a most marked influence on the character of the people, on in- 
dustry, and commerce 3 ." 

" Protestantism, long since introduced in the Palatinate, has 
enlightened the people, and dissipated an infinity of prejudices. 
In this consists the immense advantage of the Reformation; an ad- 
vantage which renders it of more practical value than all the uni- 
versities and academies of science. These only enlighten the higher 
classes ; the Reformation has enlightened the people. Based on the 
perusal of the Bible , all adherents of this sect must necessarily 
know how to read ; schoolmasters have been established everywhere, 
who teach reading and writing, and this, of itself, is a considerable 
help to mental development. The Reformation freed the people 



1. Cousin, p. 325. — 2. Mirabeau, vol. vm, p. 432. — 3, Idem, vol. vn, p. 6. 



265 



from the observance of an immense number of religious holidays, 
and thus gave fuller scope to activity. This Reformation, having 
reached the Palatinate , one of the finest countries in the world, 
where Nature so amply repays the care of the husbandman, doubt- 
less inspired the desire to carry the art of cultivation to perfection 1 /' 

Here again are more modern authorities : 

" Since the Reformation, the princes of the house of Saxony have 
always awarded independence to the profession of letters. We may 
boldly assert, that in no country in the world is there so much, pub- 
lic instruction as in Saxony and the North of Germany. There 
Protestantism was born, and the spirit of inquiry has since been 
manifested with vigour. 

" We may judge by the quantity of books sold at Leipsic, how 
many German readers there are. Workmen of all classes, stone- 
breakers even rest from their labours with a book in their hands. 
In France, it is difficult to realise the extent to which knowledge is 
disseminated in Germany. Even in villages we find professors 
of Greek and Latin ; in every small town there is a good library, 
and almost everywhere men might be named worthy of notice from 
natural talent or acquired knowledge. If a comparison in this 
respect were instituted between France and Germany, the result 
would make one fancy the two countries were separated by three 
centuries from one another 2 . " 

" Though the government of Saxony was not free by law, that 
is, not representative, it was so in fact by the customs of the people 
and the moderation of the Sovereign. The good faith of the people 
is such, that at Leipsic a husbandman planted an apple-tree by the 
road-side, and put up a board requesting passers-by not to take the 
fruit : during ten years it remained untouched. I have looked on 
this tree with respect. Had it been the tree of the Hesperides, the 
golden fruit would have been equally respected 3 . " 

" In the internal government of Prussia, everything was favour- 
able to independence and security. It was one of the countries 
where knowledge was most honoured, and where liberty actually, 
if not legally, was most respected. In all Prussia, I did not meet a 
single individual who complained of arbitrary acts on the part of 
government. Yet such complaints might have been made without 
danger 4 . " 

ee The liberty of the press, the union of talented men, the general 
knowledge of literature and the German language, so universally 

1. Mirabeau, vol. vm, pp. /»32 to 434. — 2. Stael, vol. i, pp. 118, 119. — 3. idem, p, 121. — 

4. Idem, p. 135. 



260 



spread abroad of late, rendered Berlin the true capital of new and 
enlightened Germany. What must interest all in this country is 
the intelligence, in conjunction with right ideas of justice and inde- 
pendence., which one meets with among all classes *. 

(i Over the North of Germany are scattered the most learned uni- 
versities in Europe. In no country, not even in England, are 
there such facilities for instruction and the cultivation of talent. 
Intellectual training is perfect in Germany. Sine the Reformation, 
the Protestant Universities are incontestably superior to the Catho- 
lic. All the literary honour belongs to these institutions 2 . " 

( - In Germany, all men above the lowest class are familiar with 
several languages. On leaving the schools, they usually know 
Latin very well, and even Greek. Not only are the professors men 
of extraordinary learning, but they are especially noted for the 
care and ability with which they impart their knowledge. 
Thoughtlessness may lead to all the evils which exist in the world ; 
only in a child can it attract, and when time gives a man up to his 
own guidance, it is only in calm seriousness that ideas, feelings, 
and virtues will germinate. In Germany, everything is done 
conscientiously; no one acts without reference to conscience 3 . " 

" Charitable undertakings ought to prosper in the town of Ham- 
burg. There is such a high moral turn amongst the inhabitants, 
that, for a long time, the taxes were paid into a sort of poor-box, 
no one superintending the receipts, and the required sum was 
always found to be correctly paid. Does it not sound like a legend 
of the golden age ? We cannot sufficiently admire the simple con- 
fidence which so facilitates both instruction and government \ « 

" Formerly, the clergy and nobles in Germany possessed many 
prerogatives extremely irksome to the people. The Reformation 
first undermined, and then destroyed, the temporal power of the 
priesthood ; every one felt the need of tolerance, the spirit of liberty 
made some progress, and thus all became changed. The German 
people could not but rejoice at the new order of things which re- 
lieved them from many feudal claims 5 . " 

ff If, with the miracles which Protestantism dispersed, Germany 
lost something of poetic fervour, she had ample amends. The 
people became more virtuous and refined. Protestantism had the 
strongest influence on purity of life and the strict performance of 
moral duties. Indeed, Protestantism has taken a direction which 
entirely identifies it with morality. Everywhere a most happy 

1. Stael, vol. I, p. 143. — 2. Hem, pp. 145, 146. — 3. Tietn, pp. 154, 155. —4. Idem, p. 170. 

— 5. Malte-Bnm, vol. v, p. 740. 



207 



change is seen in the lives of the clergy. With celibacy disap- 
peared the vices and irregularities of the monks, whose place is 
occupied by virtuous priests, for whom even the ancient stoics 
would have felt respect. It is necessary to have traversed on foot 
the whole of Northern Germany before one can understand how 
much virtue, or, to use a finer phrase, how many evangelical 
graces, are to be found in the modest habitation of a pastor \" 

Such is Germany. In the South, Austria and her band of Romish 
States career in the darkness of material despotism, without con- 
sciousness of the noble destiny of man. In the North, Prussia and 
her company of Protestant nations, blessed with increasing liberty, 
bask in the bright light of knowledge , in their ceaseless specula- 
tions, ever seeking God and immortality. We have now displayed 
both sides of the argument : the documents are in the hands of the 
reader, let him consult them and pronounce judgment. And being 
tolerably satisfied as to the result, we pass on to the consideration 
of Belgium and Holland, w 7 here we shall find a new fie id for the 
same demonstration. 



1. Henry Heine. 



CATHOLIC BELGIUM 



AND 



PROTESTANT HOLLAND 



COMPARED. 



Catholic Belgium and Protestant Holland haying been alternately 
united and separated, cannot be so entirely different from one 
another as the countries we have already compared. During the 
last half century alone, Belgium has been successively under the 
rule of Infidel France, of the Protestant Netherlands, and of its own 
Romanist Government. It is to be expected that these powers 
will each have left an impression of its own, and thus have modified 
the contrast which struck us so forcibly elsewhere. 

As far back as the seventeenth century, Belgium had Protestant 
martyrs. It needed the violence of a Duke of Alva, and the machia- 
velism of a Philippe II, to quench in blood the light of religious 
truth. 

In the following century, the seed of reform produced fruit from 
which the whole country drew nourishment. It is a Belgian who 
makes this acknowledgment : " In offering, * says M. Edouard 
Smits, " a safe asylum to all victims of party violence, whatever 
may be their creed, we gain not only a material benefit from the 
stranger who brings us his capital and his trade, but also intel- 
lectual advantages far superior to the former. Witness the ever- 
living fruits of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ! That death- 



270 

warrant of the noblest part of a nation ; that bloody decree yielded 
by the weakness of an old king to a woman's prayer ! Let stran- 
gers come ; we will profit now, as heretofore, by their superiority 
in art or knowledge V 

Towards the close of the eighteenth century, having passed 
under the dominion of the French, and mixed with our people 
then irritated against the priests, Belgians must in some measure 
have shaken off the same yoke, and lost some of their prejudices ; 
if this was not an advance in good, it was at least a step out of 
evil. 

But it was especially from 1815 to 1830, under a Protestant 
Government, that Belgium received abundantly the treasures of 
civilisation. 

The first benefit bestowed by Reformed Holland on Catholic Bel- 
gium was the creation of numerous schools, under the law of 1806, 
which, with the Prussian law (also Protestant), M. Cousin calls 6 ' the 
two greatest educational monuments which have yet existed in the 
world 

"In the space of eleven years, 1,146 schools and 668 teacher's 
houses were built or repaired; 1,977 masters and 168 mistresses 
received Government certificates. The published documents stop 
in 1 828, but it is probable the two following years would not pre- 
sent less satisfactory results 3 . " 

Belgium received these advantages, not only from the State, but 
from private citizens : " In several of the provinces, societies were 
formed for the encouragement of elementary instruction; to these 
are due Sunday-schools and adult evening-schools, in imitation of 
England and the United States V 

Philanthropy followed enlightenment : " Agricultural colonies 
flourished under the old Government 8 ; " " institutions for the poor 
were established; a general increase of population and comfort 
ensued 6 as also " that great development of commerce, and 
that remarkable prosperity which, " says Balbi, " have most dimi- 
nished under the new Constitution 7 ." "The manufactures on 
which Belgium now prides herself made immense progress, v says 
the Dictionnaire de la Conversation, "during the union with 

Holland; instruction spread, art was magnificently rewarded 

But the chief crime of the Protestant Government consisted in not 
having known how effectually to disarm the Romish clergy. " 



1. Statisliquc nalionale, Memoire, etc., J). 68. — 2. Cousitt, p. 156. — 3. DlU'petiailX, VOl. 
pp. 60, 61. — 4. PoUSSin, p. 214. — 5. Ramon dC L,l Sagra, VOl. II, p. 163. — 6. Diclionnaire de 
la Conversation, article Belgique. — 7; Balbi, p. 363. 



271 



It will be admitted that all these Protestant influences (from the 
trades introduced by the French refugees in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, to the knowledge and commerce imported by the Dutch in 
the nineteenth) must necessarily have modified Belgium before 
she was placed, as now, under the guidance of the Romish priest- 
hood, and must therefore lessen the moral distance which separat- 
ed these neighbouring countries. Still, let us see if this distance 
is not, even now, great enough to add another chapter to the 
contrast which, as yet, we have found favourable to the Refor- 
mation. 

Remark first that here, as in America, as in Great Britain, as in 
Germany, the disadvantages of soil and climate, on the Protestant 
side, are considerable : " In Holland/' says the Dktionnaire de 
la Conversation, " the soil is entirely artificial; it is the produce of 
patience, courage, and the love of liberty. Astonishing to relate, 
the land owes its form and shape to the Dutch themselves, who 
have also traced the course of the canals, rivers, and lakes, which 
intersect the country in all directions. Conquered from the Ocean, 
Holland is covered with rich pasture-lands and smiling plantations, 
where horticulture is carried to perfection." 

Belgium, on the contrary, " has a fertile soil, generously 
endowed by Nature ; a ray of sunshine covers it with abundant 
crops; it possesses mines of lead, copper, iron, aJum, sulphur, and 
calamine ; quarries of marble, free-stone, lime-stone, slate, etc " 

In Holland, instead of these natural riches, what do we find ? 
Water! water everywhere. While Brussels, the capital of Bel- 
gium, rests upon a rock, Amsterdam, the capital of Holland, is 
built in the midst of the floods, on thirteen million stakes ! Now 
let us see what Belgian Catholics have done with their fertile land, 
and compare it with what Dutch Protestants have made of their 
marshes. 

To reclaim, we will not say the soil, for there was none, but the 
spot where the bright pastures of Holland now gladden the eye, 
it was needful then, as now, to dry up the sea by dint of machinery 
and manual labour ; in Belgium, they have but to turn up the sur- 
face of the soil. What the Dutch have, they made ; what the Bel- 
gians have, they received, and that chiefly from the Dutch them- 
selves. " It would be a mistake, " says one of our writers, " to 
seek out of Holland for the principle of action; it is within herself 
that she found strength to struggle with Spain, France, and Eng- 



1. Dictionnaire de la Conversation, article Belgique, 



land ; it is by her own power that she has become mistress of the 
seas and of European commerce ; by her own innate strength also she 
has withstood the effects of the violent separation in 1830 from Bel- 
gium, to which she had been attached in 1814- : there has been no 
falling-off in this unprecedented situation, where every chance 
seemed against her l . " 

Again, dates must be taken in consideration. For centuries Hol- 
land has been a commercial nation : it is only of late that Belgium 
has become industrial. Long ago. the first shook off the yok- >i 
Spain, which the latter continued to wear : and this double differ- 
ence, so honourable to Holland, explains at once her greatness, and 
the languid weakness of her neighbour. Let us look back to the 
time when some few of the United provinces freed themselves from 
foreign dominion, and formed the Protestant Eatavian Republic, 
while the rest, continuing under that dominion, fell back into Ro- 
manism : When the Catholic religion was established^ large 
numbers emigrated , who were received into the cradle of the Dutch 
Republic , and associated with that nation, whose commercial power 
was already dawning. Obtaining soon a complete victory over 
Spain. Holland consolidated her own independence, and imposed 
hard conditions on the Spanish provinces. By the treaty oi 
Munster. their territory was diminished, their trade circumscribed; 
and Antwerp saw with regret her proud rival Amsterdam seize 
the reins of universal commerce 2 . " 

" Art and commerce quitted the land which neglected them; 
towns became desert, the genius of the people expired : and while 
Holland rose from her ruins with fresh vigour and wealth, the 
Belgian provinces, still Spain, fell into degradation 3 /' 

We will not. however, compare two different things. Dutch and 
Belgian trade, though the first counts centuries of existence, and 
spends more than three thousand millions amongst different people ; 
a greater amount, comparatively, than that of all other parts of the 
world, England alone excepted \ We will rather take a compa- 
rison where the starting points are the same. 

Belgium having a fertile, and Holland an ungrateful, soil, we 
may suppose that agriculture would be more advanced in the first 
of these countries than in the second. Let us consult our wit- 
nesses. Poussin , after having placed Holland on a level with 
England as to agricultural development , says of Belgium : 
" Though the state of agriculture is not, on the whole, unsatisfac- 



1. Dielionnaire de la Conversation. — 2. Jolm Call". Introduction, p. 14. — 3. Mm, p. 15. — 

4. Baflri, p. 355. 



tory, it is far from being what we have a right to expect in a coun- 
try so richly endowed by Nature. Belgian agriculture is below 
that of England *, " and consequently below that of Holland, with 
which the writer had ranked it. 

" Every traveller, and especially an Englishman/' says John 
Carr, " must be struck with the wisdom with which the Dutch, 
cherish everything which tends to the improvement of agricul- 
ture. By this admirable policy, the State maintains a compara- 
tively enormous population, in spite of the disadvantages of her 
situation. She thus delivers herself from the burden of pauperism, 
and has an abundant supply of provisions 2 . " 

The Dutch labourer enjoys an amount of comfort which contrasts 
strongly with the poverty of Flanders. " One cannot help admir- 
ing/' says the Memoir of the Court of Louis -Napoleon , "the 
comfort of the Dutch peasant : neither in himself nor his house is 
there that lamentable appearance of poverty noticeable in the 
French labourer. The dwelling of the Dutch cottager is well-kept, 
his clothes are clean and good ; all bespeaks ease and prosperity. 
Most of these men wear gold buttons at the neck and wrist; others 
gold or silver buttons to their belt, a silver watch and chain, and 
gold or silver buckles to both garters and shoes. The women are 
no less remarkable for their costly attire 3 . " 

In Holland, agriculture, instead of being given up, as elsewhere, 
to ignorant routine, is encouraged, as in England, by being made 
the subject of study amongst all classes. " Purely agricultural 
school/' says the British Review, "have been established. A pro- 
vincial school of this kind w r as opened at Groningen, the seat of a 
University, and the dwelling of some of the most zealous partisans 
of reform. A similar school exists in the neighbourhood of 
Utrecht, where scientific instruction occupies a prominent place : 
the Prince of Hollenzollern has just offered his domains at Heeren- 
berg for an agricultural establishment on a large scale. Humbler 
schools for rural districts are not forgotten ; nurseries, as they may 
be considered, w r here the masses grow, and take a good or bad 
direction. As in Scotland, each parish has its school, where every 
effort is made to convey to the scholars such an amount of mecha- 
nical and agricultural knowledge as will enable them hereafter to 
obtain their own livelihood. An old and wise regulation obliges 
theological students to follow a course of agriculture, that they may 
be able to advise their parishioners. This movement is not likely 



1. Poussill, p. 287. — 2. John Carr, p. 309. — 3. Mimoires sur la Cour de Louis-Napoleon ot 
eur la Uollande, Paris, 1828, p. 188. 

18 



'274 



to stop., for the proverbial slowness of the Dutch is still a progres- 
sive slowness. With them, prudence is allied to great obstinacy 
and invincible perseverance l : " 

The plan of assisting the poor by employing them in agriculture, 
has answered marvellously in Scotland. Read Ramon de La Sagra 
on this subject : he cannot find terms strong enough to express his 
admiration. An establishment of this nature was formed in Bel- 
gium by the Dutch, when the two kingdoms were united. What 
became of it after the separation? De La Sagra says : "I have 
compared the receipts and expenditure before and after 1830 : the 
result: proves that the deterioration of the Belgian colonies dates 
from the time of the revolution -. :: 

To what is this faJMg-off to be ascribed? Partly, of course, to 
the Dutch system of agriculture being superior to the Belgian, but 
partly, also, because benefactors became discouraged. The amount 
of subscriptions, which before 1830 fe was between -48,000 and 
6-2,000 florins , then fell to 8,476 :? . Six or eight times less ! Is 
it rash to suppose that Dutch patrons had retired, and thence to 
conclude that before 1830 Protestants alms succoured poor Roman- 
ists ? This is the more likely, as. while the loss of these institu- 
tions is deplored in Belgium, Holland possesses 5,85 J public 
benevolent establishments \ " 

As the subject of agriculture is here connected with pauperism, 
let us compare the two countries m this respect : first as to the time- 
when they were united. 

Quetelet gives this table : 

Individuals relieved at home, Population. 
District or jurisdiction of the Hague 227.501 .... 2.262.712 

— — Liege 128,683 .... 1,132,350 

— — Brussels 389,468 .... 2,216,416 

The population is not actually given in Quetelefs table, but the 
materials for the calculation are found in the preceding page of 
the same work. Nor does this writer speak of the religion of the 
different districts, but he names the provinces included in each. 
It happens that the Hague district is entirely Protestant : it is the 
Holland of the day. the two others forming the present Belgium are 
wholly Romanist. This circumstance greatly facilitates our com- 
parison. If. then, we consider the individuals relieved out of each 
population, we shall have in round numbers : 

1 pauper for 11 inhabitants in the Protestant district. 
1 — 7 — in trie two Catholic districts. 



L e thrium*ique, 1847. November. Deeembet. pi-. 139. 140. — 2. Ramon, vol. n* p. 169< 

— 3. Idem. p. 166. — 4. J dim, vol. I. p. 1 15. 



In other words, a third more paupers in the Romanists than in 
the Reformed provinces. 

Such was the state of things in 1830. Since Belgium has been 
under the influence of the priesthood, has this proportion been in- 
creased or diminished ? In the Statistique Generate du Royaume 
de Belgique, for 1841-185Q, published by the Minister of the In- 
terior, we find this statement : — 

Paupers relieved throughout the kingdom. 

Average from 1848 to 1850 942,290 

Number of inhabitants to one pauper 4,65 

Or, one pauper to five inhabitants h 

Thus, under the patronage of the Romish clergy, the number of 
paupers is two-sevenths more than under Protestant rule; and, in 
proportion to the population, double that of Holland ! 

The next consideration is : how may the poor be withdrawn from 
the moral dangers of their position? By exercising a beneficial 
restraint on the guilty, or, belter still, by the prevention of crime. 
As to the first point, Ramon de la Sagra, speaking of the classifica- 
tion of prisoners, according to their degree of guilt, says : ." In 
Belgium everything has yet to be done in this respect 2 , and I have 
no hesitation in saying that the Dutch organisation is better than the 
Belgian 3 . " On the second point, the author is equally explicit. 
He says : " Establishments for the prevention of pauperism in 
Belgium have not that appearance of wisdom and benevolence 
which distinguish those of Holland 4 ." Let us hear M. Cousin 
on the same subject : " I was astonished to find that the one cen- 
tral house of detention for young criminals, for all Holland, only 
contained from 60 to 80 boys, and that, with those expected from 
Leyden, the number would amount at most to 150, on a population 
of two millions and a half. The explanation of this phenomenon 
I found in the excellent schools for the poor, which met me in 
every direction. At Rotterdam, a commercial town with a popu- 
lation of 100,000, filled with merchandise, and where the multi- 
plicity of canals and ports facilitates theft and even more serious 
offences, theft is rare; and housebreaking or violence of any kind 
is so little known, that our guides assured us they would have 

1; In this number are included not only those relieved throughout the year, but also those 
\vho have received temporary help. We mention this, because the Report especially notes it. 
But neither are we bound to suppose that those named in the Dutch Report as relieved at home, 
were so throughout the vear. — 2. Ramon, vol. n, p. 241. — 3. idem, p. 242. — 4. idem, 
p. 179. 



270 



difficulty in recalling any instances of it 1 . " Malte-Brun adds : 
<c There is much less depravity amongst the lower classes in Hol- 
land than in the rest of Europe. One rarely hears of robbery, and 
still more rarely of other crimes 2 . " 

Let us now consider the state of education throughout the coun- 
try, and not only amongst the poor. 

We have seen that Belgium owes much to the Dutch government 
in this respect. " In 1816, elementary instruction, which had 
been neglected by the preceding (French) government, and left to 
itself, had entirely decayed ; in twelve years, the King of Holland so 
throroughly revived it that the year 1828 opened with 4,030 mas- 
ters and mistresses, and 247,4-96 scholars 3 . " 

But, putting aside Dutch intervention in this rapid progress, let 
us consider it as belonging to Belgium, and compare results at this 
period : on one side in the Protestant, on the other in the Romanist 
provinces. 

Quetelet gives the following figures : 

District of the Hague. 1 pupil for 8 inhabitants. 

— Liege. 1 — 11 — 

— Brussels. 1 — 10,50 — 

Taking the medium between these two last numbers, and allow- 
ing for the double population of the Brussels district, we shall have 

1 pupil for 8 Protestants. 
1—10 2/3 Catholics. 

That is, a fourth more scholars amongst the Protestants, and that 
at a time when the King of Holland was so actively advancing 
education in Belgium. 

Since then, Belgium has been under the guidance of the Romish 
clergy : has she retained her system of general instruction ? De La 
Sagra will tell us : " Ducpetiaux, though approving of the agents 
of the revolution, acknowledges the disorder it created. What 
have we done, he says, since 1830 ? We have changed our mode 
of action, it is true, but have we improved it ? We have thrown 
down edifices, and rebuilt nothing; for several years the ground 
has been covered with ruins, and no attempt has been made even to 
clear the space*. " 

Butles us quote Ducpetiaux himself: "In various localities 

1. Cousin, p. 147. — 2. Malte-Brun, vol. vii, p. 37. — 3. Ducpetiaux, vol. i, pp. 59 to 61.— 
4. i'.amon, vol. n, pp. 24 and 25. 



different plans of usefulness were abandoned after the revolution 
of J 830. The increase of schools does not necessarily imply real 
progress ; in truth, the greater part of these schools are bad or at least 
indifferent ; numbers of masters are wholly incapable of teaching 1 ." 

ie The old government had commenced the training of useful 
schoolmistresses ; the revolution destroyed these establishments. 

" In 1828, out of 4,030 institutions, the number of male and fe- 
male teachers who received certificates was 2,145. The last report 
(after the revolution) gives 3,477 teachers, not certificated i . * 

That is to say, after six years' retrograde movement, the num- 
ber of non-certificated teachers, which had been less than half, rose 
to nearly two-thirds. 

How are we to reconcile the increase of the number of schools 
with the perversion of the system ? Thus : " Under the old regula- 
tions, schools existed whose masters were not regularly trained; 
they were chiefly infant schools, which were tolerated because the 
usual catechism and prayers were taught, with the rudiments of 
reading. Since the revolution, several of these teachers have 
somewhat enlarged their scope of instruction, and all these petty 
schools figure in the reports on education 3 . " 

These few lines show that the schools which have swelled the lists 
are bad, that their masters and mistresses were incompetent, and 
that the chief instruction was the catechism and the prayers ; in one 
word, the priests' schools. It is worthy of notice that the religious 
bodies who devote themselves to teaching refused to submit to 
examination 4 . 

Clearly, then, it is to Romanism that Belgium owes the weaken- 
ing of her system of education. What the clergy could not control, 
they willingly allowed to decay. By claiming unlimited liberty of 
instruction, that is, by refusing to submit to the inspection of the 
State, or to receive from it certificates of capacity, the priests freed 
themselves from all superintendence, and were not sorry that these 
teachers, who were beyond their influence, should propagate igno- 
rance, true sister of superstition. This is the natural deduction 
from the following quotations : 

" Under the old government, the law adjudged a penalty to those 
who should be bold enough to teach without a licence ; but the Ca- 
tholic clergy chose to consider themselves exempt from this law. 
Being however hampered in the exercise of their functions, and 
indiscriminately mingled with other classes of society, the whole 



1. Ducpetiaux, vol. i, pp. 68 and 69. — 2. Idem, p. 108. — 3. Idem, p. 85. — 4. Ramon, 
VOl. II, p. 21. 



Lody looked at the decree as an infringement of their privileges and 
an insult to their opinions. From that time they carefully watched 
for an opportunity of avenging themselves 1 . "* 

The government having abdicated the influence of authority, 
fell; and. as Ducpetiaux says, all that had been created by that au- 
thority felt the effects of the blow 2 . 

N Amidst the general neglect of primary instruction in Belgium, 
we most remark the activity of the Catholic clergy in filling the void 
left by government. Moved, perhaps, by laudable aealj but cer- 
tainly inflamed by an ardour of encroachment little compatible with 
their separation from secular affairs, the religious bodies took the 
place of ordinary masters 3 . " 

What was the result of this clerical pretension to freedom from 
inspection and control? Others took advantage of this false inter- 
pretation of liberty ; iU-cmalihed men thrust themselves into the 
office, and it was not difficult to find a schoolmaster who was an 
ignorant brute, or worse ! Several barely know. " says Ducpe- 
tiaux. "'what they pretend to teach : some open a school for three 
or four months in the winter, simply because,, at that season,, they 
are unable to pursue their usual employments as carpenters, ma- 
sons, etc*. 

The clergy saw no harm in this : first, because, as Poussin says, 
the whole population (including the ignorant lay teachers i was 
under their influence; and also because they were not sorry to see 
darkness spreading over the land. Thus, masous and carpenters 
metamorphosed into schoolmasters, and teaching nothing, for- 
warded their work, while, with the old Dutch government which 
exacted certificates of capacity , inspected schools, and distributed 
books, there was great risk of light being diffused, the effects of 
what the priests call a Protestant propaganda. 

But . whatever may have been the part taken by the elergy in the 
Belgian revolution, and whatever their present doings in schools, 
let us compare the picture just presented of public instruction m 
this Catholic country with that drawn of Holland by the same 
authors, with the addition of M. Cousin. Two lines will show the 
superiority of Holland as to the number of scholars : 

In 1836 there was in Belgium 1 scholar for 107 inhabitants. 
In 1835 — Holland 1 — 83 inhabitants 

Or, proportionately, one-fourth more in Holland than in Bel- 



1. Ramon, vol. it, p. 13.— -2. idem, p. -2X. — 3. Mem, p. 29. — A. Daepetiaux, vol. i. p. 91. 

— 5. Ramon, vol. n, p. 352. 



279 



gium. But. though this is an honourable distinction, it is not the 
most important part of the subject \ the capacity of the master and 
the style of school being the chief points worthy of attention. 

" This difference is observable in the scholastic systems of the 
two countries : in the one the co-operation and iniluence of the 
clergy ; in the other their exclusion. In Belgium, the priests direct, 
at least partially, all primary instruction, not only as to religion 
and morals, but as to every branch of education. In Holland, they 
take not the slightest part in public instruction; they do not even 
visit the schools ; religious doctrine is not allowed to be discussed, 
though the master is charged to teach his pupils the rules of the 
morality and the truths of the Gospel h "> 

" Owing to this happy union of good elements, wonderful effects 
have resulted in Holland, as far as regards domestic morality, and 
the acknowledged honesty of all classes 2 . # 

M. Cousin, who is so well acquainted with educational matters, 
confirms these assertions. He says : " From all I have seen and 
heard, I am persuaded that those brought up under the system pre- 
scribed by the law of 1806, are honest and pious. In Holland, 
Christianity pervades the life as well as the minds of the people • 
yet, in the schools of this religious nation, the only instruction or- 
dered by article 22 is Bible history, with such reflections as are 
suggested by the narrative 3 . " 

While M. Ducpetiaux laments the state of education in Belgium, 
M. Cousin admires that of Holland : " These facts/' says he, "are 
sufficient to show the prosperous state of public (especially elemen- 
tary) instruction in Holland 4 /"' 

While M. Ducpetiaux acknowledges that in Belgium masons and 
carpenters undertake to teach that of which they are ignorant, 
M. Cousin, on the contrary, declares that H the excellence and talent 
of the Dutch schoolmasters have chiefly contributed to this satis- 
factory result V 

According to M. Ducpetiaux, many schoolmasters in Belgium have 
become discouraged, and abandoned their profession, while M. Cousin 
says : " Everywhere in Holland I found the teachers contented and 
happy. The situation is much sought after ; a fact which speaks 
for itself 6 ." 

This writer condenses high praises in these words : " I no- 
ticed with admiration the Dutch method of general instruction. I 
had opportunities of convincing myself that to this excellent orga- 

1. Ramon, vol. i, p. 64. — 2. idem, p. 106. — 3, Cousin, p. 170. — 4, Idem. p. 150. — 
5. Idem, p. 171. — 6. Idem, p. 172. 



280 



nisation are due the character of the people, the patriotism of the 
citizens, and the sentiments of religion and benevolence which 
animate all classes 1 . " 

These happy results have contributed to produce the high 
esteem which Holland enjoys in Europe 2 . " 

A passing traveller also notices what close examination revealed 
to the philosopher : i( The Dutch/' says John Garr, "have always 
felt the great importance of education. They are aware that by 
rousing a spirit of research and industry in youth, they are giving 
the best hope of success in after life under every government. 
This system has raised Holland to that high degree of power which 
is witnessed in the various periods of her history. To this may be 
attributed the most entire absence of barbarism in her last revolu- 
tion. Even an English merchant may be surprised in some of the 
Dutch warehouses by the intricate knowledge of arithmetic dis- 
played by the youngest clerks, by the large amount of business 
transacted in one day, by the creditable appearance of the ledger, 
and by the rapid and correct calculations of the different rates of 
exchange; as, also, by the variety of languages so readily spoken. 
We are as much astonished at the length and assiduity of their la- 
bours, as at their well-regulated habits and life 3 /' 

It is evident that education in Holland has exactly that tendency 
which Ducpetiaux regrets it has not in Belgium : it is moral; which 
brings us to consider the habits of the people. 

The vicinity as we]l as the intercourse of the Dutch and Belgians 
naturally provokes a comparison between the two nations : it has 
already been made by Ramon de La Sagra, whom we like to quote, 
precisely because he professes the Roman Catholic faith. 

He says : " There could not be found two people more different 
from one another than the Belgians and the Dutch. The impe- 
tuous and enterprising character of the former contrasts strangely 
with the caution, patience, and perseverance of the latter, whose 
qualities, though less brilliant, are not less productive of good 
results. 

" In Belgium, the populace, fond like the French of pleasure, 
may be seen at theatres, gardens, and all places of public resort. Jn 
Holland, the chief pleasure is found at home, and the family circle 
furnishes the truest happiness. The one need movement, action; 
the other, freedom from agitation and tumult. Hence the quiet, 
comfortable existence of the Dutch ; hence those pictures of domestic 



1. Cousin, vol. i. [i, 3"). — 2, Idem, vol. i. p ISO- — 3. John Garr, p. 48. 



281 



felicity, which delight the eye of the traveller. In Holland, life is 
enjoyed; in Belgium and France, it is recklessly expended. This 
difference is certainly a characteristic trait in the two people. Now, 
if any one should ask which of them I think the happiest, I should 
not hesitate to reply, the one w T hich seems the least so *. " 

M. Cousin will complete the portrait. He says : '/In Holland, 
every one lives at tome, and family ties have even greater strength 
here than in Germany. The Dutchman is a wise and well-reputat- 
ed being; he does not seek to shine, preferring in all things reality 
to show. He has more honesty than generosity, more good sense 
than wit or imagination, more perseverance than enthusiasm. The 
nation is rather good than great. The general temperament is 
phlegmatic, which, in favoured individuals, rises to a calm but 
immoveable firmness, rendering them capable of long and arduous 
enterprises 2 . The people are amongst the most moral and reli- 
gious in the world 3 . " 

Bat the contrast will be instinctively apprehended by the reader, 
if we merely place, side by side, two distant pages of the same 
WTiter : " A brilliant future/' says Malte-Brun, " would be in 
reserve for the Belgians, if the nation could decide on following 
the path of real progress ; but, blinded by misplaced vanity, it is di- 
vided and powerless. The mind of a Belgian does not stretch 
beyond the limits of his town. Municipal government and religion 
were of immense service to him, more than two hundred years 
ago; these ideas of his infancy ought to have expanded since then ; 
they have remained as contracted as ever. The cities are all rivals, 
but not with that enlightened rivalry which is productive of 
good; it is petty hatred, rather than noble emulation. The men 
do not live frugally; taverns and clubs engross a great part of their 
time; five hours given to business is considered a good day's work 
for a clerk or a merchant. The young men, particularly in the 
higher classes, are inexcusably ignorant 4 . " 

What does the author, who speaks thus of Belgium, think of 
Holland? 

" The parsimony of the Dutch led them to throw off the yoke of 
the Spaniards, by whom they were so heavily taxed, and to refuse 
to pay tithes to the clergy and indulgences to the Pontiff. In the 
great struggle of the sixteenth century, their caution and persever- 
ance triumphed over all obstacles. They felt that religious liberty 
was the basis of civil freedom, and that only through these could 

1. Ramon, vol. i, pp. 30 and 31. — 2. Cousin, pp. 9, 10. — - 3. idem, p. 36. — 4. Malte- 
Brun, VOl. MI p. 87. 



282 



they insure that of commerce and industry. The number of useful 
works and establishments in Holland, kept up at great cost, leave a 
favourable impression on the mind. Those dykes which resist 
the power of the Ocean, those canals which traverse the country, 
those hospitals and benevolent institutions, do honour to Holland, 
no less than the good faith so observable in her mercantile transac- 
tions 1 . " 

Two short passages from another writer, not meant to be united, 
offer a still stronger contrast. M. de Rougemont says : " The 
Dutch are active, laborious, frugal, reflective, prudent, and perse- 
vering i their honesty and truthfulness are as proverbial as their 
cleanliness; elementary instruction is widely spread amongst 
them 2 . " (( The Belgians, says the same writer, " are known by 
their excessive intolerance and superstition 3 . " Flemish towns 
are celebrated for the rude and dissolute habits of the people \ n < 

Yet the Belgians are often spoken of as essentially religious. 
What, then, is their religion ? M. Poussin will tell us : " In Bel- 
gium, society has a great external appearance of devotion, a sort of 
religious discipline, a tranquil, almost sleepy look : is it really in a 
better state than ours which is so devoid of religion, so merry, some- 
times so turbulent ? I cannot think so after all I have heard, seen, 
and examined. The most shameful vices circulate in low and 
concealed paths, amidst that half-monastic society 5 ." " I am ready 
to declare that these towns of eighty or a hundred thousand souls 
foster as much hideous vice as our capital, with her million of 
inhabitants, is accused of doing 6 ." These lines call to mind, by 
way of contrast, the following of M. Ramon de La Sagra : " The 
state of morals in Holland, and the severe organisation of society^ 
check the development of the passions, and preserve the precious 
candour and innocence of youth 7 . 

Let us close this comparison with the testimony borne to the 
Dutch by their old king, Louis-Napoleon; a testimony all the more 
honourable for giver and receiver, in that it was offered after the 
abdication of the monarch, and when the services of the Prince of 
Orange had been preferred to his in the then approaching war : 
"Considering the damp, uncultivated, and desert appearance of the 
greater part of Holland, the soil constantly inundated, and, so to 
speak, artificial; on the one side undermined and ravaged by the 
principal rivers of Europe, which discharge themselves upon it ; on 
the other, continually threatened by the inroads of a stormy sea; 

1. Malte-Brim, •vol. vn, p. 36. — 2. Rougemont, p. 499. — 3. idem, p. 505. — 4. idem, 
p. 507. — 5. PoilSSill, p. 393. — 6. Idem, p. 394, — 7. Ramon, vol. I, p. 133. 



283 



considering the immense labours necessary to preserve the soil 
from being swept away, and the incessant activity required to 
obtain a livelihood where the climate is unfavourable, and the 
land barren and unsteady, we cannot suppose that this people love 
their country. We pity them for not being more favoured, and 
look on them as a band of exiles, forced to live in this unhealthy 
and ungrateful land. But, when we examine their character and 
habits more closely, we recognise the virtues of this people; their 
candour and good sense, their attachment to their duties, their 
patience, their love of toil, their moderation in their pleasures, their 
gratitude and love to the Author of all good; when we consider 
their skill in all they undertake, the great men they have produc- 
ed in every department without exception, the perfect state of their 
agriculture and their commerce, their progress in the sciences and 
arts, the high degree of their knowledge and civilisation, we are 
induced to change the comparison, and call them a band of philo- 
sophers, disgusted with the folly and wickedness of mankind, en- 
deavouring in seclusion to live according to the dictates of reason 
and conscience, and pitying the noisy pleasures, the show and 
luxury, of the rest of the world ; or rather we look on them as a 
chosen people, destined by God as an example to others 1 ." 
^ Happy nation! amongst you reign justice, reason, humanity. 
Those who govern you and understand your character will be the 
happiest of governors, if they follow your good sense, and seek 
your welfare 2 . " 

In order to explain the/ moral distance which separates Holland 
from Belgium, we must here take into account the religious state 
of this latter country, so deeply imbued with Romanism; we must 
speak of those inquisitors of conscience who have no less than 
sixteen confessionals in one little Jesuit chapel, at Brussels; of 
those six hundred convents, which, on an average of twenty 
persons to each, give a total of 12,000 monks or nuns; of that ma- 
terial religion which offers worship to the heart of Jesus, to the 
wound in his foot, to the nails of his cross; especially must we 
speak of the Christianised heathen festivals. But we have already 
so often described Romanism, and we shall have to do it again on 
so many occasions, that we fear to weary the reader by displaying 
here the long list of the practices of a church which boasts of 
being always and everywhere the same. For the sake of brevity, 
we will merely give one characteristic specimen of Belgian Catho- 



1. Memoire de la Cour de Louis Bonaparte, vol. II, pp. 11, 12. — 2. Idem., p. 123. 



284 

licism, and of those dearly loved kermesses, celebrated all over the 
kingdom. The following details are official, and copied verbatim 
from a programme published by the printer to the archbishopric 
of Mechlin. 

From the preface we learn that this jubilee is kept in recollection 
of the miracles performed by a miraculous image of Our Lady of 
Hanswyck. The principal part of the fete was a cavalcade which tra- 
versed the town of Mechlin four times. It was composed of eight 
allegorical cars. The 1 st was preceded by " Four heralds on horse- 
back, representing the mirth of Mechlin, and thirty-six young 
ladies, also on horseback, representing the Litanies of the Virgin, 
and bearing in their hands emblems of the attributes of the mother 
of God. " The first car contained the " Queen of Angels, surround- 
ed by cherubim and seraphim, etc.; " the 2 nd , " the Queen of Pa- 
triarchs, surrounded by Patriarchs, and seated under a crown sup- 
ported by four branches of trees ; " the 3 rd , " the Queen of Prophets, 
being represented in the costume of their day, and Jesus Christ, 
the chief object of prophecy, represented by Eugene Hagaerts ; " 
the 4 th , "the Queen of Apostles;'' the 5 th , "the Queen of Mar- 
tyrs;" the 6 th , " the Queen of Confessors;" the 7 th , " the Queen 
of Virgins;" the 8 th , " the Queen of all Saints." Such was the 
first part of the cavalcade. The second contained "the Philhar- 
monic Society, preceded by its drums and the Virgin of Mechlin, 
represented by Mimi Vankiel, on horseback, followed by all the 
Virtues, attributes of the town. " The third part represented the 
royal household, "their Majesties the King and Queen of the Bel- 
gians and the young Princes, led by Providence, and followed by 
Religion, Justice, etc." The last part was : " 1 st , The three-mast- 
ed vessel, the Welfare of our Country, in which sits Saint Cathe- 
rine; 2 nd , the horse Bayard, ridden by the four brothers Aymon; 
3 rd , the cavalcade of Giants : the grandfather, grandmother, and 
three little giants; the Wheel of Fortune; 5 th , two camels, each 
bearing a Cupid; 6 th , a detachment of lancers. " 

"Before proceeding, we feel it necessary to repeat that this was 
not a masquerade, but a Popish ceremony, winessed by a hundred 
thousand persons in faithful Belgium, in the month of August, 
1838. Let us resume these incredible details. 

" The jubilee lasted fifteen days. His Grace the Archbishop himself 
officiated in the triumphal procession. The Board of Trade, in con- 
junction with the burgomaster and aldermen, obtained the favour 
of having f all the taverns and places of public resort open all 
night during the continuance of the festival/ including two Sun- 



28o 



days. During this time there were games with the cross-bow, tilts 
on horseback, and fireworks, mixed up with sermons and masses, 
and the whole wound up by a solemn service of thanksgiving. 
Such is a brief but exact account of the jubilee of Mechlin. 

" To crown the work, the Board of Trade, composed of the cure 
and others, by the intervention of the superior ecclesiastical autho- 
rity, had addressed a request to the Holy See to obtain indulgences 
for those who should piously observe the jubilee. The Holy Father, 
by a rescript dated Rome, 1 1 th of May, 1838, granted a favourable 
reply to the petition. 

" The young actors in this religious representation were taken 
from the best families in the town. A great number of trained 
horses being necessary for the cavalcade, a demand was made to the 
Minister of War, M. Wilmar, who hastened to comply with the 
request. 

" It is needless to say that the people thronged to these indecent 
farces, and that for a fortnight the town presented a continuous 
scene of drunkenness and debauchery, of quarrelling and foolish 
pranks, evils that Romish solemnities always tend to promote, but 
which, on this occasion, were uninterrupted, thanks to the laudable 
care taken to leave the taverns open all night during this c pious 
representation 1 .'" 

We see that the principal method employed by the clergy to 
make themselves acceptable to the people is to amuse them, or, at 
least, to take part in their amusements. It is not the Church that 
is to convert the world; the world has already converted the Church. 
To be ' ' all things to all men, " in the bad sense of the word, 
is the great secret of Rome. Clerical influence is immense in 
Belgium . 

" The preponderance of Romish clergy in Belgium/' says de La 
Sagra, " is a bad omen for the future, unless they moderate their 
pretensions. When we see them not content with the results of a 
revolution skilfully directed by themselves, invading the province 
of education, and dexterously profiting by its neglected condition, 
we tremble for the consequences of such conduct 2 ." " The daily 
encroachments of the clergy," adds M. Poussin, "their spirit of 
monopoly, their attempt to assume the censorship of the press by 
interdicting certain journals to the faithful, the unceasing gift of 
miracles, which they turn to such lucrative account ; all these ten- 
dencies, so contrary to the genius of the age, make us foresee that 



1. Europe I'rolatante, 1839 to 1840. — 2. lulUlOn, VOl- II, p. 32. 



286 



the numerous exactions of the priest will give great advantage to 
the liberal party 1 . n 

" All converges towards a moral and intellectual subjugation, 
which is Avhat we chiefly dread in the Jesuit system of education ; 
for it aims at nothing less than the extinction of all free will and 
spontaneous action; that is, of the very life of the soul % " 

It is in Flanders especially that the influence of the Romish 
clergy is felt ; there Catholicism reigns in all its purity; there, too, 
ignorance is supreme, and from thence come legions of beggars. 
" Flanders is the Ireland of Belgium. Some years ago it fell into 
such extreme misery, that it is now difficult to recover it. It is a 
constant source of perplexity to the Belgian Government; like Ire- 
land, Flanders is overwhelmed with pauperism 3 . " 

It is, then, chiefly with Flanders that our comparison must be 
made; for there is the maximum of Catholicism. Its minimum is 
with the Walloons, neighbours of France, who have fallen so tho- 
roughly under our influence that they speak our language, and have 
largely adopted our customs. Here there is less subserviency to 
the priests ; consequently greater activity, a better state of agri- 
culture, and more relative prosperity. With the Walloons, Ro- 
manism is on the surface, infidelity below. <c The Belgians/' says 
M. Poussin, " are unanimous in their creed; they are all Catho- 
lics, and show great zeal in their Worship, of which they observe 
all the regulations, precepts, and errors, with scrupulous exactness. 
The people are religious, bigoted, and superstitious . The free 
exercise of religion has as yet made little progress in Belgium. If 
here and there is found a follower of Voltaire, you may be sure 
that his sentiments are confined to himself; in his family, this 
same man is a stricter Catholic than others 3 . " 

Is not this a fair picture of the French Catholic ? We might say 
of the Parisian Catholic ? 

It is a strange or rather a melancholy fact, that the absence of 
Romanism, even when not replaced by a purer creed, is preferable 
to its presence. If our comparison had been between not two but 
three nations, the first Protestant, the second Infidel, the third Ca- 
tholic, we should have found that the unbelievers held a medium 
place as to morality. This may be proved by comparing, first, the 
Dutch, the Walloons, and the Flemish ; then the English, French, 
and Spanish. Whence we deduce, not only Romanism does not 
improve the character of man, but that it injures it. 



1. Poussin, p. 259. — 2. Poussin, p, 240. — 3. The Times. — k. Poussin, p. 29. 



287 



We have hitherto compared the effects of Catholicism and the 
effects of Protestantism on nations more or less civilised. The re- 
sults which we have verified may he attributed to anterior causes. 
That no one may fall into this error, let us see what the two reli- 
gions have done, each in its respective sphere, for the primitive 
nations on whom they have been the first to operate by their doc- 
trines; in other words, let us compare the Catholic and the Protest- 
ant Missions to the Heathen. 



ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS 

COMPARED WITH 

PROTESTANT MISSIONS. 



In order to make our comparison complete, it must be directed, 

First, to the Missionary Churches ; 

Secondly, to the Missionaries themselves; 

Thirdly, to the people to whom they are sent. 

We purpose, then, to contemplate the subject under these se- 
veral aspects. And, first, let as compare the Churches that send 
out the Missions. The Romish Church has but one Missionary 
Society, known under the name of the " Society for the Propagation 
of the Faith, " and having its seat at Lyons, with the whole earth 
for its sphere, and Christendom for its treasury. Founded in 1822, 
its character is by this time ascertained, and its mode of gathering 
funds is admirably arranged. Sanctioned by the Pope, and pro- 
tected by the bishops, it is also aided by contributions from the 
laity, which are excited by certain indulgences attached to dona- 
tions. The organisation of the collectors is also remarkable. 
They scarcely ask any sacrifice, frequently nothing more than a 
subscription of a penny a week, for which they remit a copy of the 
" Journal de I'OEuvre," which is circulated among the subscrib- 
ers. The rest is made up by the sale of miraculous medals, 
blessed by the Pope. 

19 



290 



The low rate of the subscription to the journal, and the cheapness 
of the medals, bring both within the reach of the smallest fortunes, 
and these of course are the most numerous. 

The funds are collected throughout the world : we would ask, 
then, what has been the result? what is the income of this mighty 
association, organised and in full activity for more than thirty 
years, and reaching to all the Catholics of the earth. The report 
of 4850 gives 3,082,729 francs. 

Three millions of francs ! the annual product of all the zeal, of 
all the faith, of all the charity of Romanism for its Missionary 
work. But, as there are 139 millions of Roman Catholics in the 
world, according to Balbi, if all had contributed each must have 
given at least two centimes annually ! Is this much, or is it little ? 
God alone can determine this positively ; we will endeavour to do 
so relatively. Let us see what is done elsewhere. 

Among Protestants, it is not a single society that we meet with ; 
the associations outnumber the nationalities; and we shall not 
take into the account either the Bible or Tract Societies, with 
some others, which, although having reference to the Heathen, and 
being strictly religious works, are yet but what are especially de- 
signated as Missionary Societies. It is to these last that we limit 
our inquiry. The following is a list of them, and of their annual 
receipts. The elements will be found at the end of the sepond vo- 
lume of the (C History of Evangelical Missions. " 



292 

PROTESTANT 



11 K TV 

VA.L iii 




MJooIIMjuILo 




of Ihe 


HAME§ OF SOCIETIES. 


and 


STATIONS. 


S0C1ETV. 






LABOURERS. 




1701 


Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. . . 


386 


341 


1701 


Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. 






1705 








1732 


Society of Missions of the United Brethren at Bethelsdorf . . . 


286 


61 


1786 




6,860 * 




1792 




351 


102 


1816 




6 


4 


1795 




250 


108 


1798 


Scottish d» d° 


18 


14 


1706 




12 




1797 


Dutch d° d°. 


24 


10 


1769 


Church of England Missionary Society 


2,000 


93 


1S00 


Joenike's Institute at Berlin 






1810 


American General Missionary Society 


492 


97 


18U 


Society for Baptist Missions 


199 


48 


■1816 




45 


12 


1817 


Presbyterian d° d° of America 


67 


14 


1819 




347 


67 


1820 




120 


29 


1823 


Berlin Society for the Propagation of Evangelical Missions. . 


27 


6 


1824 


Paris Society for d° d° 


40 


10 


1828 




36 


20 


1820 


Missions of the Established Church of Scotland 






1835 


Hamburg Missionary Society 






18^6 


Lutheran Evangelical d° Dresden 


9 




1837 


Missionary Society of Lausanne 






183S 


D° d° for Africa (Glasgow) 


10 


3 1 


1840 








1 S/<0 


D° d° of Irish Presbyterian Church (Belfast) .... 






1842 


Central d° for the Heathen 


101 


22 


1842 




2 


1 


1843 


Free Church of Scotland Missions 


24 


5 I 


1843 


Danish Missions (Copenhagen) 






1843 








1843 









* This number, like many others, very considerable, includes not only the family of the 
missionary, but those of his assistants, and the native missionaries. 



293 



MISSIONS. 



INCOME 




in 


SPHERE OW ACTfl©^'. 


FRANCS. 




o (\(\c\ Ann f 

-i,UUU,UUU 1. 


Tlie East Indies, Africa, America, Australia. 
Ireland. 


3,000 




337,000 


Labrador, N. and S. America, Greenland. 


2,570,000 




633,000 




56,000 




1,800,000 




55,000 




130,000 


The Malucca Isles, Java, Celebes. 


2,570,000 


Malta, Greece, E. Indies, Egypt, Abyssinia, E. Africa, North- America, ami 
Australia. 


-1 .~)<>A AAA 

1, 280,000 


Greece, Turkey, Syria, Persia, Koordistan, China, E. Ind., Air., Am., Sandwish Isles 


299,000 
134i,000 
30?,000 


Greece, China, E. Indies, "W. Africa, N. America. 

Greece, Malta, Turkey in Europe, Asia-Minor, E. Indies, E. and W. Africa 
America. 

India, China, E. Af.ica, N. America, Texas. 


6:-0,000 


E. Africa, N. and S. America. 


160,000 


Greece, Candia, Turkey, Koordistan, E. Africa, N. and Central America. 


76,000 


S. Africa, E. Indies, N. America. 


100,000 


S. Africa. 


90,000 


D° and Borneo. 


1 27,000 


E. Indies and New Zealand. 


1 27,000 


E. Indies, New Holland, Jews, German colonies in America. 


4,500 


1. Louisiana, a station in Sioux country, N. America. 

E. Indies, New Holland, New Zealand, N. America. 
S. Africa. 


150,000 


East Indies, Jews. 

Danish settlements in the E. Indies. The Gold-coast of Africa. 
1 North America. 



294 



Tims, against three millions collected by Roman Catholics for the 
Missionary cause,, behave to place fifteen millions collected for the 
same objects in Protestant countries — a sum five times greater, 
furnished by a population three times less. Thus, multiplying five 
by, three -we have, w ith reference to those "who support the Mission- 
aries, the expressions of faith, zeal, and devotedness fifteen times 
less developed among Romanists than among Protestants. 

Now let us pass on to the Missionaries themselves. Let us see 
them at their work. We will not institute any comparison be- 
tween their respective members, since this is but the necessary con- 
sequence of the difference of income between the parties ; this ap- 
plies also to the number of stations. What we have to compare is the 
nature of the work, the means employed, and the results obtained. 

In order to form a correct estimate of the Missionary, let us take 
him at the moment of departure; let us make an inventory of his 
suite and of his personal baggage. 

A Protestant Missionary is generally accompanied by a school- 
master, a surgeon, and sometimes by an artisan capable of building 
a house, or printing a book. This last directs our attention imme- 
diately to one of the first objects of the Missionary caravan ; a press, 
or at least books. The schoolmaster, the doctor, the artisans, we 
foresee, will each and all help to announce the Gospel in their spe- 
cial departments. 

Having reached the appointed station, i'n the midst of a people 
whose language is neither known beyond their own region, nor 
written within it, the first employment of the Mission is to learn 
this, and to commit it to writing. While they are reducing it to the 
rules of grammar, they are also printing a gospel as well as a dic- 
tionary, and thus briuging the nation or tribe within the pale of 
civilisation. Now, we must bear in mind that this method is not 
arbitrarily chosen ; it is but the necessary development of the 
Protestant system, which is to teach the Written Word, the Sacred 
Scriptures. It is by teaching that the Missionary opens up his way. 

Look into any report of Evangelical Missions, and at every sta- 
tion you will find a school and a printing-press ; and the grammars 
and dictionaries used by Romish Missionaries in India and in China 
were all compiled by Protestant labourers, who have thus fixed and 
stereotyped the materials with which they have to w 7 ork. In every 
report you find such details as these : " Doctor Milne (Malacca) 
sets up a printing-press, opens schoois. He has published an inte- 
resting journal, the Chinese Magazine, as well as several tracts 
in English, Chinese, and Malay. Two years later, 1 848, the famous 



295 



Anglo-Chinese. College was founded. Doctor Milne died before he 
had completed his Chinese translation. Doctor Morrison gave a new 
impulse to the College l ." 

" Schools were established (at Singapore), and the press soon mul- 
tiplied copies of the books translated into the native language, 
which penetrated to the heart of Central India. In 1823, Doctor 
Morrison founded the Malay College 2 . Since 1841, a college for 
young Chinese has also been founded (at Siam), with a printing 
press, schools, and religious services. The books and tracts are 
eagerly sought by the natives. Since \SM, the Missionaries have 
published a monthly journal. " 

Nor are these details confined to any particular class of Protestant 
Missions. The course is the same in all: Schools, pririting-presses, 
instruction; and with this intellectual w r ork philanthropy goes 
hand in hand , caring for the sick, ministering instruction in the 
more simple of the useful arts, and thus establishing the empire of 
the first. In this manner the advantages of science and civilisation 
are diffused. We might point to an hospital established by a Mis- 
sionary physician in China, where hundreds of persons afflicted 
with blindness are received; we might tell of another Christian sur- 
geon who devotes himself to visiting the sick among the heathen. 
We are not now calling attention either to the self-devotion or to 
the merits of these men ; we speak of them only as pious doctors, 
gone forth to heal the sick. Farther on, our readers will see the 
drift of this observation. 

Such then are the external modes of action of the Protestant Mis- 
sionary * and his baggage consists of a book, a printing-press, and a 
case of surgical instruments. Now, let us inquire into that of the 
Romish Missionary. The list furnished by himself runs thus : 
" A breviary for his own private use, a missal for the service of his 
chureh, a patine for the communion, chaplets, crucifixes, medals, 
and images for his converts. " 

This prepares us for the course of action in which we may expect 
to find the Romish Missionary engaged among the heathen by whom 
he is surrounded; his object is not to instruct, but to baptise and to 
enrol beneath the banner of Rome. He has no need to make* a 
study of a language in order to teach a people who already speak to 
write it ; all he requires is such fluency in the colloquial idiom as 
may enable him to communicate with the natives. It is to be a 
means of securing a conquest to himself; not a means of communi- 

l. Hisloire des HHssionairea fivangeliqiies, vol. I, p. 284. — 2. Idem, p. 28o, 



4 296 



eating knowledge to the aborigines. He avails himself of it not 
only to teach what he chooses to explain, but to conceal what he 
desires to hide. With his death, all germ of knowledge dies out; 
while in the case of the Protestant Missionary, who leaves a written 
language, he also leaves the means of introducing not only religious 
knowledge, but the arts and sciences in general, and that in no 
wise as a contingency of his personal influence, but through all time 
while the language shall be in use. The germ is deposited in the 
soil, and that secures the fruits to successive generations. And now 
let us follow the course of the Romish Missionary in his journeyings 
among the heathen. He recites a formula, he baptises in haste, 
he teaches the Pater and the Ave by heart, he instructs them to 
bow, to say the rosary, to carry a cross in procession, and that is all. 
Doubtless there are exceptions, but this is the general mode of pro- 
ceeding, at least according to the report of the Missionaries them- 
selves, speaking of their Portuguese brethren. " Certain priests 
of this nation succeeded, as they relate, in planting Christianity 
here ; but alas ! what did we find on our arrival ? Scarcely a vestige 
of it. The faith and piety of the flock had vanished with the pas- 
tors ; and if from time to time a few zealous servants of the Lord ap- 
peared, their ephemeral visits had produced only passing results V 

And yet this plan of ephemeral conversion is still persevered 
in. Here is an instance : " We had been at Fort Albany two 
mouths ; I had baptised more than forty adults, and upwards of 
sixty children ; I had gone through the catechism with more than 
fifty Indians. The Mission was accomplished. 33 We do not mean 
to say that the Romish Missionaries are never stationary ; we only 
seek to prove that ambulating Missions form part of their plan ; for 
we thus gain a clearer insight into the nature of their operations, 
and the sort of conversions which they effect. In general, then, 
their object is neither instruction nor civilisation , but the introduc- 
tion of a custom, a sacrament, or the giving the sanction of the name 
of Catholic to some heathen practice previously in use. " If one 
of them/' said a Romish Missionary in speaking to us of a heathen 
community, " be overtaken by an accident, he goes at once to the 
magician, makes his confession, and asks for some penance. And 
what these poor unbelievers do as a mere ceremony, our neophytes 
are instructed to perform as the most necessary act of the religion 
they have just embraced 2 . " 

We see, indeed, that tbe transition is by no means difficult. 

1 Avnales, 11° 134, p. 6. l83i. — 2- Idem, m 1'2", p. 137. 



297 



Sometimes the mere presence of some object of Roman Catholic 
devotion is supposed to be sufficient to work conversion : (i The 
sight of the cross that I planted last year/' says Father Laverlochere, 
" make the most salutary impression 1 . " It seems, indeed, that it 
is not always requisite that the cross should be seen; it is enough 
that its figure be traced in some secret place. <e Before we left 
Maugareva, we determined to leave at least the sign of the cross ; 

i we therefore cut it on the two little columns of the cabin that had 
been assigned us, and also on two trunks of trees. M. Laval had 
even the courage to engrave a cross on one of the pillars of the 

\ temple, and to conceal in a corner of the same temple an image of 
Our Lady of Peace, the patroness of the Mission. When our effects 
were all embarked in the canoe, we addressed the Virgin with con- 

, fidence in these words, Iter para tntum, and departed. In the 
Island of Akarnaru we found children eaten up with vermin; we 
cut off the hair of some and washed their heads, in order that we 
might the more easily baptise the dying without being detected by 
the natives 2 . 

It is true that when the age admits of it, the child is previously 
instructed, but how ? Is it a Chinese convert ? He is made to re- 
cite a Latin prayer : i( A little girl, aged only four years and a 
half, already knows the Pater noster and the Aye 3 ," said one of the 
: Missionaries. The crucifix, the rosary, and penance occupy a pro- 
minent place in this propaganda, as we see in such passages as the 
following, extracted from the Annates: " I shall kiss my little 
wooden corpse and the image of Mary, and I shall plant a cross in 
my hunting-ground V 

Another fasts every Friday, and passes the whole of his life in 
a state of continual abstinence, eating nothing but rice and a few 
vegetables, and that to the entire satisfaction of the narrator, who 
adds : " To the glory of the religion which these two noble Chris- 
tians know so well how to practice 5 . " 

Sometimes the medal is used as a means of conversion : " I 
asked them if they would not gladly receive baptism? ' Oh ! no, ' 
they replied, c that would make us die. ' An answer that shows 
how much or how little these women understand about the baptism 
offered to them." The Missionary did not however despair: " See- 
ing all my efforts to win over these prejudiced souls were fruitless, 
I retired to the recesses of the forest, and there I entreated the Im- 
maculate Mary to interest herself for these unhappy creatures, who 

1. Annates, ip 125, p. 137. — 2. Otaheiti, pp. 157 to 159. — 3. Amahs, n° 136, p. 215. — 
H 4. Idem, p. 210. — 5. Idem, p. 239. 



298 



had just refused her medal; and I promised to say a mass in her 
honour. On the following day the two sick women, still afraid lest 
they should have died in the night, change their mind, are baptis- 
ed, kiss the cross and the medal 1 . " 

In reading such recitals, we were tempted to ask if the senses 
exercised any influence in these conversions, and three pages farther 
on we think we found the answer to this question : " I saw several 
of them in tears during the singing of the Vexilla regis." Savages 
moved to tears by a Latin chant ! It is possible ; bat do these emo- 
tions flow from a penitent heart or from nervous excitement? 

It is plain that the Romish Missionaries aim less at securing a 
moral reformation than at the accomplishment of certain acts; thus, 
instead of giving the number of their scholars or of their hearers, 
they publish lists of their own official services : 

u - Catalogue of sacraments administered during the year in 
Corea : 

Confessions 6,844 

Communions 4,929 2 " 

Now, the reverse of all this is the practice of the Protestant Mis- 
sionaries, who give the numbers of their communicants as bearing 
on the number of converts, but who would never think of rehears- 
ing each separate season of communication as though there were 
any merit attached to the act itself. 

But there is more, and it is worse. It is not always even a 
short residence, a week's catechising, ordinances easy or hard 
to comply with ; sometimes it is a simple rite accomplished 
without the knowledge of the individual on whom it is practised. 
It is no isolated fact to which we allude; we have before us 
accounts of a series of facts, the results of a connected method, and 
this method the natural consequence of the dogma of the efficacy 
of baptism for putting away original sin, and taking the baptised 
persou straight to Heaven. Thus, we find Romish Missionaries ad- 
ministering it with peculiar satisfaction to children in dying cir- 
cumstances; nay, even rejoicing when death comes at once to set 
the seal to this salvation. Let us not speak a word without book. 
cc It is the gold and silver of Europe/' writes one Missionary, "that 
enables us to administer baptism to so many children in danger of 
death. The number of little Chinese thus baptised is less this 
year (1850), than in the year preceding, and this diminution arises 
from the decrease of your alms; when you are able to send us 



i. Annates, n° 136, pp. 123, 125. — 2. Idem, n° 134, p. 74. 



299 



more money, our figures will rise again. Grant us, then, I conjure 
you , an increasing yearly stipend. For a hundred francs to our 
baptisers, 300 or -400 children at least can be regenerated, of whom 
two-thirds go almost immediately to Heaven. Press the rich to open 
their purses ; urge it upon those who would secure the best interest 
for their capita] to send it to Su-Tchuen, where 20 sous, by preserv- 
ing two souls, produce two fortunes yearly. 

The baptism of 9i, 131 sick children of infidel parents has not 

been the work of our salaried baptisers alone Certain pious 

neophytes, who profess to cure infantine complaints, have also 
baptised many for us. 

Baptisms of the sick children of heathen parents in sundry of 
the Asiatic Missions : 



At Su Tchuen, 1849 99,807 

At Tun Nan, 1848 4,000 

At Corea, 1847, 1848 1,225 

At Cambodia, 1849 5,000 

Among the Bumese, 1849 127 

In Eastern Cochin-China, 1849 4,074 

— Western d° d J 1849 4,688 

— Central d & d° 1849 5,017 

At Tonkin (Eastern) , 1849 , 13,506 

D° Central, 1849 12,439 

D° Western, 1848 9,428 

In the same Vicariate, 1849 9,649 



With this inventory the Missionaries send the information that 
three-fourths of the baptised are already dead, and in possession of 
the heavenly inheritance H 

It is not a little inconsistent that, in order to accomplish these 
baptisms, recourse is often had to fraud, and even to falsehood. 
Thus, in Les Annates de la Sainte Enfance for December, 1852, 
vol. 4-, n° 29, page 462, we read : " Onr people, so simple in their 
general habits, are wonderfully adroit where the salvation of a soul 
is at stake. Those who are somewhat addicted to trickery have 
singular skill in winning over the children, while they assure the 
parents that if they are unwilling to consent, they must do as they 
please, and that family feeLings are always respected. One man in 
particular is spoken of who has some little knowledge of medicine, 
and who has already baptised hundreds of children without the 
cognisance of the heathen parents. Some he baptises furtively with 
a little water from his moistened handkerchief; at other times he 
asks for water under pretence of washing the child's face, in order 
the better to ascertain its malady, and then uses it to wash away 



1. Annalesy May 1851, IP 136, pp. 224 to 226. 



300 



the stain of original sin from the soul; not unfrequently he makes 
use of a little instrument by which he administers medicine to 
children, for the purpose of bringing water in it. He turns again 
and again as if to bring himself within the child's reach , and 
when he finds that no one is looking, he discharges the water, and 
if it be perceived on the bead, it is supposed to be a few drops of 
the medicine that the patient has not swallowed. " 

The Protestant method of conversion is very different, and much 
less expeditious. We have seen something of the preliminary 
work of these Missionaries, and after all this they often continue 
their instruction for years, without announcing any conversions. 
With them it is not enough that a heathen man or woman attend 
their place of worship and ask for baptism ; they require evidence 
of a change of life, and a process of examination, before any can 
be admitted as members of the Church. In the Report of the 
Society of Evangelical Missions, read at Paris in 1853, we find this 
statement. " Five neophytes, whose religious impressions are of 
long standing, are receiving instruction preparatory to baptism 1 . " 

And the following : ' £ The examination of thirty-one neophytes, 
whose puratory exercises had been long and serious, lasted three 
days; during this time the Church was greatly edified by their 
frank confession of faith, and by the details they gave of their con- 
version. " 

We might cite hundreds of parallel cases from the reports of the 
same society. Would it be believed that the king of a people 
among whom the French have had a settlement for the last twenty 
years, who has favoured their work, attended their schools, joined 
their assemblies for public worship, and conducted himself in an 
irreproachable manner, loving the Gospel and admiring its effects, 
and rejoicing over the conversion of his own children, yet dares 
not call himself a convert, and is still unbaptised 2 . What a con- 
trast do these scruples, and these catechisms, and these Protestant 
Missionaries present to the baptisms administered by the Romish 
Missionary on the very day after his landing on the heathen shore ! 

But laxity or strictness in the admission of candidates are not 
the only marks of distinction. The Church of Rome has always 
taken advantage of State influence. For centuries past she has 
leaned upon France in Syria, just as more recently she has availed 
herself of the same alliance in Oceania. We give examples, which, 
being of recent date, may be easily verified. 



1. Annales, p. 18. — 1. Idem. p. 24. 



301 



Otaheiti had been for half a century converted to the Protestant 
faith. Certain Romish Missionaries, no less zealous against heresy 
than against paganism, conceived the project of evangelising it 
afresh. They performed the voyage in vessels belonging the State, 
and the officer in command published the following declaration : 
" The chiefs of the island must understand that, to persecute the 
Catholic religion, to denounce it as idolatrous, and under this absurd 
pretext to banish Frenchmen from the isle, is an insult to France 
and to her king. " At the same time, the captain asked not only 
for liberty of worship, which had been given, but also land for the 
erection of a church, and the deposit of a sum of 20,000 piastres on 
pain of bombardment. The Queen submitted; and, under protec- 
tion of the French cannon, the Romish worship was set up K 

Have Romish agents renounced their civil and military re- 
liance in their subsequent operations? Twelve years after the es- 
tablishment as we have just read of it, we find the following in the 
Journal des Debats % : ei We have news from our settlement at 
Otaheiti down to the 10 1,1 of February. France, as the consequence 
of her Protectorate, has established a station there, filled only by a 
brigadier and one gendarme. The inhabitants are all either Pro- 
testants, or Mormons. Within the last eighteen months certain 
Catholic Missionaries have established themselves, and have made 
proselytes; but their zeal having carried them a little too far, a 
conflict was the result. A Mormon refused baptism, they would 
fain compel him, and called in ihe assistance of the brigadier and the 
gendarme in order to ascertain the grounds of his resistance. " The 
same means were brought to bear in the Sandwich Isles, and with 
the same success; except, indeed, that here the Romish Missiona- 
ries knew better how to take advantage of favouring circumstances. 
Father Maigret wished to found a high school, and to give the diplo- 
mas himself. Captain Mallet, sent from France, came to his aid, 
required a grant of land for the school, the celebration of marriage 
without the intervention of the civil power, and the abolition of a 
law restraining the sale of brandy : all these demands being made 
in one document, as if to demonstrate more clearly the success 
of the Church as the result of the power of the secular arm. 

Here we see the Romish Missionaries, under favour of a man-of- 
war, obtaining, first, "liberty of worship; then the right of making 
converts; then alienation of lands for building a church; subse- 
quently for a school; then the sanction of the government to a por- 

i. Otaheiti, p. 260. — 2. Quoted by La rreese, May 22, 1833. 



302 



tion of the instruction of its youth being committed to the clergy 
without inspection or control • next, the substitution of religious 
law for civil authority in the matter of marriage, and thus the 
giving over of the family in its most important interests to the 
dominion of the priests K " 

Our readers may perhaps ask why these Romish Missionaries 
should select as their field of action islands where the Gospel had 
been already proclaimed ? M. Desgraz, secretary to the comman- 
dant Dumont d'Urville, ventures on an explanation : It will be 
seen/' says that gentleman, "that the object our Missionaries have 
in view is not the amelioration of the heathen, but the glory re- 
sulting from the work; they therefore prefer embracing an oppor- 
tunity that will bring them before the public by the noise which 
the edifice they are striving to pull down will make in its fall, to 
those obscure labours which have for their end and aim the civilisa- 
tion of some remote corner of the globe, where, should success reward 
their labours, they would never attract the attention of the public. 
The spirit of controversy and of fierce dispute has now taken the 
place of that spirit of peace and toleration which ought to bear 
rule 2 ." 

We leave with M. Desgraz the responsibility of his explanation; 
and, having thus shown the difference of the means employed by 
Romish and by Frotestant Missionaries, we proceed to show the dif- 
ference of the results obtained. 

First, then, what are these results in the case of Romish Missions? 
Here we are met by a difficulty. We feel that the answer will 
vary with the witness who may be called before us, and even in 
some according to the subject on which he is questioned. Still we 
believe that we have the means of giving an impartial statement. 
We shall take the evidence of Romanists, and we shall leave them 
to choose their ground. These Missionaries detail their own pro- 
gress in a journal published for the last thirty years. From the 
long annals of the Propagation of the Faith, a friend has selected 
the most striking parts, and has published these extracts in the form 
of a pamphlet, entitled, " Nouveau coup-d'ozil sur Vceuvre de la 
Propagation de la Foi. " 

We take it for granted that a work, the object of which is to 
obtain subscriptions for Roman Catholic Missions, will set them in 
the most favourable light. We take our statements from the pages 
of this work. And lest we should be accused of giving garbled 



1. Otalieiti, p. 280. — 2. Idem, pp. 195 and 196. 



statements, we will give the extracts entire. We must needs be 
impartial; let the reader only be patient. 

We begin at page 9 : u We remember those delightful societies 
formed during the last century in Paraguay, in which 20,000 sa- 
vages lived together in a state of peace, prosperity, and innocence 
such as we cannot recall without emotion. Something of this kind 
is seen in several of the Missions recently established. " 

Thus, father Rougeyron, speaking of the Wallis Islanders, ob- 
serves : " What I have been most struck with is, that form of the 
Primitive Church which has seemed to revive among these people. 
The villagers meet every evening in the chapel for united prayer, a 
catechist presides, and when the congregation disperses they retire 
some to their cabins, some to the shore, and the rest remain in the 
valley • and then they recite the rosary, and sing hymns in honour 
of Jesus and Mary. On Saturday, these hymns are prolonged to 
11 o'clock, and even till midnight, so that everywhere their voices 
are heard, and the whole island joins in praising the God who has 
saved it. On the following morning these hymns are resumed at 
sunrise, or even at daybreak. The Missionary rings the mass bell; 
all hasten to the service. Out of 2,000 communicants, 500 present 
themselves every Sunday at the holy table. Formerly these people 
were cheats, thieves, pirates, and cannibals; now, thanks to the 
power of grace to renew the heart, an excessive mildness is their 
characteristic feature, an honest frankness seems natural to them, 
and they hold all theft in horror. Indeed, locks and bolts are no 
longer necessary; and the Missionary may safely commit to their 
keeping fruit, wine, money, and effects. Happy people thus to 
have savoured the gift of God ! Even death seems to have lost all 
terror for them! e Why should we fear death?' said one day to 
me a catechumen, ' shall we not be still happier in the next life?' 
On another occasion I was pitying the sufferings of an invalid : 
' Father!' he replied, ( do not pity me; suffering is good for 
Heaven ! " 

The same prodigies appear also among the converted heathen 
of North America : 

ff The charity of our Indians is wonderful," writes father 
Hoecken, a Missionary in those parts, to his Superior; and their 
union is such that a whole tribe lives as one family. Their submis- 
sion and love to their chiefs are unlimited, and those chiefs also 
live in the most perfect harmony one with another. Never, they 
say, ' do our hearts suggest or our lips demand any but the same 
things. > The chief regards himself as the father of the tribe; his 



304 



voice is never raised when he issues his orders; but he never speaks 
in vain; all hasten to fulfil them. Ts an Indian in circumstances 
of difficulty? he consults his chief, and acts in accordance with his 
ad\ice. As the father of his people, the chief provides their sus- 
tenance. Every animal killed in the chase is taken to his lodge, 
"where it is divided into as many portions as there are families in 
the tribe ; a side of each animal being reserved for those whose bu- 
siness it is to cultivate the ground in spring. The distribution is 
made with the most perfect justice; the old and the sick, the blind 
and the orphan, share alike with the hunter. What is this but 
a return to those happy limes when the Apostle tells us 1hat 
Christians were all of one heart and of one mind? Complain- 
ings, murmurings, slanders, are unknown here. Our converts 
place their glory in the faithfulness with which they serve God, 
and their ambition is limited to the knowledge of their duty. 
It is the thought of God that guides the young in the choice of a 
partner. During the moments of leisure, they flock round the Mis- 
sionary, besiege him, so to speak, and would even keep him up the 
whole night, if his strength were proportioned to his zeal. Pride 
and vain glory are unknown to them. How often do we see grey- 
haired fathers seated by the side of children of ten and twelve 
years of age, and listening as pupils to the instruction of these pre- 
cocious teachers, while they repeat the prayers or explain the figures 
of the " Catholic Ladder" with all the gravity of a master ! And 
then, in seasons of adversity, when the products of the chase fail 
them, and they are thus condemned to a rigorous fast, no sign of 
impatience escapes them. Calm and tranquil, they attribute the 
failure to their sins; while on the contrary they render thanks and 
praises to the Lord for every instance of success. But if the first 
object of the Missionary be to make known to the unbelievers the 
way of salvation, they nevertheless do not neglect to teach them also 
those acts which are necessary for this life. It was necessary," 
writes father Liansu, Superior of the Mission of Gambier, in 
Oceania, i( to provide for our neophytes, to clothe and to lodge 
them . To this subj eel we turned our attention, and God has blessed 
our efforts, so that it is no longer an essay. In the large island alone, 
we have eight looms, which this year have supplied 4,300 yards of 
cloth. All the cotton has been prepared in ten weeks, and woven in 
seven months. Our islanders have determined to build themselves 
stone houses, finding that their wooden huts perish too quickly, and 
make great havoc among their finest trees. They have drained all 
the marshy spots, in order to plant taro; they have rooted up whole 



305 



forest of useless reeds, and planted the sweet potatoe instead ; they 
have brought the most sterile lands, hitherto covered with fern, 
under cultivation. We trust that they are thus placed beyond the 
reach of the scourge of famine/' 

Now, let us review this long quotation. In the first place, theu, 
what is become of the Jesuit xMissions of Paraguay ? They are com- 
pletely annihilated. On the departure of the fathers, the Romanised 
savages returned to their forests. They had been trained to arms, to 
labour, all for the benefit of the Society of Jesus. . . But so little did 
they appreciate these advantages, that, after having tasted of Romish 
civilisation , they preferred the life of the savage. They may have 
been in error, but we must acknowledge that their conversion was 
not a very deep work, since it left the seeds of such a preference 
in their hearts. 

Father Rougeyron informs us that the Islanders of Wallis recite 
the rosary and sing hymns on Saturdays up to midnight, resuming 
them at daybreak. Then, out of 2,000 converts, we have 500 com- 
municants. This is ail well; still we have here no indication of 
anything more than the external work which custom and the love 
of variety render easy. As to the change said to have taken place 
in their moral character, the features bear the marks of flattery; 
but every one must judge for himself. 

The pictures of the North American Indians must also be referred 
to the judgment of the reader. But, when we come to the great 
Isle Gambier, a farther work has been accomplished ; the body has 
been cared for as well as the soul. Already eight looms are in 
operation; the natives resolve to build stone houses; they have 
uprooted forests, and planted potatoes, so that in future they hope 
to be beyond the reach of famine. 

Such is the result of Romish labour, as set forth by Romanists. 
And now let us examine the work of the Protestant Missionaries; 
and instead of consulting their own agents, as we have done in the 
case of the Catholics, let us take the report of Catholics on this side 
of the question also. We shall thus place ourselves beyond the pos- 
sibility of suspicion. As a pendant to the Isle of Wallis, we will 
take Otaheiti, another Island of Oceania, civilised by Protestants, 
the island which the Romish Missionaries have endeavoured, 
though in vain, to detach from the Gospel. What was its state 
in 1824, that is, just 25 years after the arrival of the first Protest- 
ant Missionary? We will give it in the words of the report fur- 
nished by Admiral Duperrey to the Minister of Marine : Otaheiti 
is very different now from what it was in Cook's time. The 

20 



306 



Missionaries have effected a total change in the manners and cus- 
toms of the inhabitants. Idolatry is no longer practised, and the 
religion of Christ is generally professed. The women no longer 
come on board the ships ; they are indeed extremely reserved when 
we meet them on land. Marriage is on the same footing here as in 
Europe, and even the king has consented to have but one wife. 
The wives also eat with their husbands. The infamous association 
of Arreoys (religious assassins) no longer exists. The sanguinary 
civil wars of former days have disappeared, with human sacrifices, 
since 1816. All the natives can read and write ; they have religious 
works translated and printed either at Otaheiti, Uljeta, or Eimes. 
They have handsome churches to which all people repair twice in 
the week to hear sermons. You may often see individual hearers 
taking notes of more striking passages of the disco ur se 1 And now, 
having heard the admiral, let us listen to the Minister of Marine, 
as presiding at the general sitting of the Geographical Society of 
Paris, on the 11 th December, 1829 : " It is not the lust of riches 
that has brought to the light of civilisation that vast portion of our 
globe, scarcely known prior to the discoveries of the unfortunate 
but illustrious Captain Cook : I mean Polynesia. What a wonder- 
ful event is that moral revolution, brought about as if by enchant- 
ment in that Archipelago which within the last twenty years was 
still groaning [under the yoke of the most absurd and at the same 
time sanguinary idolatry. All at once human sacrifices cease ; the 
priests of falsehood disappear, the altars of them that were no gods 
fall, and the cruel law of Tabas gives place to the mild and benefi- 
cent law of Christ ! What glory for Christianity ! But her triumph 
does not stop here. When the idols were broken in pieces, the arts 
of civilisation were introduced ; the natives were inspired with the 
love of order and the desire of employment. The despotism of 
arbitrary power has been exchanged for a government which is 
every day becoming more regular in its action ; and beneath the- 
shadow of the Churches where half-cultivated men assemble to 
worship the living God, are public schools, in which children, for- 
merly abandoned to the grossest ignorance, receive that primary 
instruction without which the civilisation of any people must be 
incomplete. ! what cannot love accomplish when enlightened 
and directed by faith 2 ! " 

And now, under the sanction of these two authorities, we may 
surely claim a hearing for our Protestant writers. This is but 



1. Otaheiti, p. 112. — 2. Idem, pp. 115, 116. 



307 



simple justice, when with reference to Romish Missions we have 
consulted none hut Romish authors. We shall select our quota- 
tions so that each may hear upon a different object. 

We will refer first to the signs of external prosperity, for the 
conversion of the heart may be denied when it is only manifested 
in words, hut how can we refuse our assent to that which asserts 
itself in facts ? In 4804, then, " Van-der-Kempt was authorised to 
found a district colony at the Gape of Good Hope. The Boors, who 
were to choose the locality, fixed on a very undesirable situation, in 
order, as they said, that the Hottentots, unable to subsist otherwise, 
might be obliged to come to them for employment. Such was the 
origin of Bethelsdorp, situated in an arid desert, without vegetation, 
without timber trees, without water. It now presents the aspect of 
a well-built village, having a chapel, schools, fine gardens, a 
printing-press, and all sorts of trades in operation; and the inhabi- 
tants, amounting to 600, are decently attired, and distinguished for 
the purity of their manners. In 1842, they collected among them- 
selves about 3,000 francs for Missions. 

Pacaltsdorp is no less remarkable in other respects. When the 
Missionary Campbell repaired there in 1813, it was but a miserable 
kraal or village, composed of huts formed of the branches of trees 
woven together, and having scarcely 60 inhabitants, and these 
plunged in the very depths of ignorance. When Campbell return- 
ned thither in 1849, he could hardly believe the testimony of his 
own eyes. It so far exceeded his expectations ; it was no longer a 
wretched hamlet, it was a beautiful village, with elegant houses 
each in the centre of its garden, fine roads, and a substantial wall 
all round, to keep out the wild beasts. The Mission on the Kat 
river affords a striking proof of the manner in which the converted 
Hottentots reflect the light on those around them. Near to Fish- 
River, and beyond the district of Albany, there formerly existed a 
savage tribe, called Gonaquas, who in 4827 had been almost extir- 
pated by order of the government, on account of their depredations. 
In 4829, the promulgation of the edict of liberty gave freedom to 
30,000 Hottentots, who had been held as slaves by the Dutch 
farmers; of these, 25,000 were provided for by the colony; the rest 
were invited to settle in a desert region on the Kat river. 
Eighty little villages rose in succession, the chief of which is Phi- 
lipton; but the majority of the inhabitants were heathen, brutal, 
ignorant, and vicious. The government placed 440 Christian 
families among them, drawn from Bethelsdorp. and Theopolis. A 
touching spectacle was thus afforded by the self-denying charity 



m 

of these Christians, who thus devoted themselves for the sake of 
the poor savages. Not only did they attend to their material inte- 
rests, but they established divine worship, and these wretched 
Hottentots became attached to them as sheep to their shepherds. 
Schools where everywhere opened, and Doctor Philips saw men 
and even half-naked children learning to read, in order that they 
might teach others. In a short period, the whole mass was leaven- 
ed, heathenism disappeared, and hundreds were converted to the 
Lord. Well-built villages were ihe admiration of the traveller \ the 
population increased to 5,000; there are more than fifteen stations 
for religious services, and above 700 communicants i . *- 

This Mission is of course English, and as the English have a 
peculiar reputation as colonists, this success may perhaps be attri- 
buted to their skill and genius. We turn, then, to a French 
Mission, since the French certainly have no prestige in their favour 
on this head; and it will be seen that the result is the effect of 
Protestant principles, not of any particular nationality. 

There is a French Missionary settlement among the Bassouthos- 
Betschuanas, in S. America. In 1843, the Missionaries sent home 
many reports of the manners of this cannibal people, who carried 
away men, women, and children like animals of the chase. Now, this 
has ceased, and the whole tribe has come under the influence of the 
Gospel, and is thirsting for instruction. The French stations are : 

I. Bethulia, which is in such a flourishing condition that the 
number of inhabitants has risen from 600 to 3,000. The effect of 
preaching has been wonderful. In 1848, the number of communi- 
cants, all natives, was 110, and a collection was then made for 
Missions, which reached the sum of i 0,200 francs. 

II. Beersheba. In 1842, a printing press was set up here. 
In 1843, the Missionary Holland baptised forty-six adults and 
thirty children. 

III. Morija, built in 1833. A town at the base of the high moun- 
tains. The Missionary Arbousset baptised here in September, 1844, 
thirty-five adults, five of whom were chiefs of villages. The work 
has gone on ever since. Considerable sums have been contributed 
to build another church. 

Mekutiing is a French station of more than 4,000 persons. 
In 1841, three converts were condemned to death on pretence of 
magical practices. As they were leading them away to death they 
were about to bind them, but the victims declared it to be unneces- 



1. History of Evangelical Missions, vol. 1, p. 57. 



309 

sary, as they would not fly; and the executioners, overcome by the 
calm dignity of their bearing, drew back, and refused to shed the 
blood of these men. The chief, in a transport of fury, seized a 
lance and pierced them to the heart. In 1843, the Missionary 
Daumas baptised seventeen adults ; since this time the station has 
made great progress. 

After this proof that the French and English Missions are alike 
successful, it may be that some persons will be found to attribute 
their success to the ignorance of the people among whom they 
labour. " These heathens/' they may say, " offer no opposition to a 
work which costs them nothing. " But, besides the sacrifices they 
have made in furtherance of the cause of Missions, we can now 
show those who are ready to die rather than give up the faith. 

The Missionary Station of Tinouvilli (E. Indies) excited the 
jealousy of the idolators, who sought to get rid of it by complaining 
to the government. As they did not succeed, they had recourse to 
violence 4 . " They organised a society, the members of which 
swore by the sacred ashes to retain the old religion and the cus- 
toms of their country, and to oppose Christianity by every means 
in their power. They sent messengers in every direction with 
terrible menaces, which they proceeded at once to put in execution. 
They destroyed chapels, they set fire to houses, they expelled cate- 
chists, they committed every possible outrage; but the Christians, 
instead of being intimidated, found their numbers grow with the 
danger. From the year 1841 to 1842, the number of converts rose 
from 13,000 to 19,000, and the excess of baptisms was 500; 234 auxi- 
liary missionaries, natives, proclaimed the Gospel in 360 villages, 
and the glad tidings are heard throughout six vast districts. In 
1844, 1220 converts were baptised. " 

Such was the result of a popular persecution. We will now turn to 
one of a still more sanguinary character, originating with the go- 
vernment. The Protestant Missions in Madagascar date from 4818. 
C( In a short time the efforts that King Radama was making for the 
civilisation of his people was seconded by them with the most 
extraordinary zeal. Schools were opened, and in 1820 a printing- 
press was set up. In 1832, 10,000 of the people were able to read. 
The results of the proclamation of the Gospel were less remarkable ; 
still the idols had fallen into contempt, so that their worshippers 
took fright and complained. Up to 1826 there were no baptisms. 
In 1828, the king authorised the administration, and shortly after* 



%, history cf Evangelical Missions, p, 216 e 



310 



wards died. On this, things assumed a very different aspect. 
One of his wives strengthened her power by putting to death the 
members of the royal family. The schools were closed for six 
months, and the Queen ordered the scholars to be dispersed among 
the soldiers. All the while the Missionaries continued to print and 
distribute Bibles, and the preaching of the Gospel was attended 
with a larger measure of blessing. Complaints were openly made 
that the Christians despised the idols of the country, were always 
praying, had ceased to swear, and that the women had become chaste. 

At length the storm broke in fearful violence. The Mission- 
aries received orders to give up their work. An assembly of at 
least 150,000 persons was assembled by the roar of cannon, and all 
Christians were required to give in their names under pain of 
death; 400 were turned out of their several employments, others 
were heavily fined or reduced to slavery. The reading of the 
Bible and prayer were forbidden ; still several of the converts kept 
their BibJes, but woe to them who were surprised in the act of 
reading them. One woman was put to a cruel death, another was 
transfixed with a lance and thrown to the dogs. Horrible sacri- 
fices of children were ordered in honour of the idols. Many Chris- 
tians fled to the forest, and in the space of eight months, in 1836-7, 
there were 1016 executions. 

After these atrocities, the Missionary John went to Tamalava to 
visit his afflicted brethren. He found many of them hidden in the 
woods, where they celebrated divine worship. They were disco- 
vered, and the chief, in his refusal to betray his brethren, was put 
to death. In July, 1840, sixteen converts, seized just as they were 
about to embark, replied thus to their judge : " We are neither 
thieves, nor murderers, but men of prayer; if this be a crime in 
the eyes of the Queen, we are ready to suffer whatever she is pleased 
to order/' Nine were then put to death with spears. Another 
band of fugitives was overtaken, and of these one hundred were 
burned at slow fires! This was in 1841. About this time an 
order was issued that prisoners were no longer to be brought to 
the capital, but were to be put to death on the spot, by precipitat- 
ing them headlong into deep trenches, and throwing boiling water 
over them. Still, rather than renounce the faith, these Christians 
preferred to live in dens and caves of the forest, and to endure 
the severest privations. Their number increased, and at last the 
persecution was at an end K" 



1. fnstory of Evangelical Missions, vol. I, p. 95 and following. 



3H 

We weary our readers with details; we will proceed to 
give them a general idea of the Missionary work in a statistical 
form : 

" In 184-9, there were 36 Protestant Missionary societies, occu- 
pying 1,200 principal stations; 2,500 Missionaries, including their 
wives; and 3,080 auxiliary Missionaries, all natives. The number 
of persons then alive, who had been converted by the agency of 
these Missions, was not less than 800, 000 V 

Some persons may hereupon be disposed to inquire whether 
the Missionaries have not other means besides those of persuasion at 
their disposal ? Such, for instance, as temporal relief. To remove 
this suspicion, it suffices to say that often, after years of service, the 
Missionary bequeaths to his widow and his children no other resource 
than that supplied by Christian charity. It will be granted at once 
that if these men had large sums at their disposal, they would not 
have left their families in want . Nor is this all. We can point to Mis- 
sionaries who have gone forth at their own expense, and have sup- 
ported themselves by the labour of their hands, in the midst of the 
heathen whom they were endeavouring to bring to Christ. Thus, 
"some Missionaries from Berlin established themselves in Bahar (E. 
Indies) in 1839. While preaching the Gospel, they were to labour for 
their daily bread and to found a Christian colony. Their plan was 
regarded as visionary, but it succeeded even beyond their expecta- 
tions." " The same plan has been pursued by other Missionaries 
from Berlin at Tagbor (E. Indies) , and Zioushugel, in Oceania. The 
Moravian brethren had already set the example in 1732. Leonard 
Dober, potter, and David Nitschman, carpenter, set sail for America 
with six dollars in their pockets. Mocked and regarded as madmen 
at Copenhagen, they were received by a planter at St. Thomas, 
and appointed inspectors of his slaves; but the progress of the 
work was too slow, and, resigning their charge, they took a 
house, and opened it for the reception of all the negroes who were 
desirous of hearing the Gospel. They were frequently reduced to 
a state of the greatest misery; nothing daunted them. As the 
night was the season when the negroes were at liberty, these zealous 
servants of God found little time for sleep V 

We close these extracts with the admirable example that, these 
same Moravians have set in Greenland : " When they reached 
this icy region, they set about providing for their sustenance by 
hunting and fishing, but in these pursuits they were unskilled, and 



1. .Report of Soe. for Missions, in Paris, 1852, p. 30. — 2. History of Evangelical, vol. I, 

p. 30 and folowing. 



312 



violent attacks of illness made them think of departure. In the 
meanwhile, two more Missionaries, Beck and Banisek, arrive. Hav- 
ing learned to translate the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the 
Lord's Prayer, they approached the natives. The study of the lan- 
guage offered ^reat difficulties, and not one of the Greenlanders 
would come to live with them. The year following brought no sup- 
plies from Europe, and the hostility of the people increased. They 
were extravagant in their demands, and even refused occasionally 
to sell any provisions to the brethren, so that, in order to stay the 
cravings of hunger, they had recourse to shell-fish and sea-herbs. 
If they remained more than one night with them , the savages 
sought to irritate them by mockeries, imitating their mode of read- 
ing, praying, and singing; they even interrupted their exercises by 
frightful cries, or by beating the drum. Sometimes they even 
drove away the ambassadors of Christ with stones, spoiled their 
goods, and sent their canoes adrift. Five years were passed in this 
manner. In 1738, certain natives arrived from the South and enter- 
ed the Mission-room while one of the brethren was engaged in a 
translation of the New Testament. They asked what he was about, 
and the Missionary joyfully embraced the opportunity of announcing 
the message of Eternal Life. He read of the Saviour's agony at 
Gethsemane, One of the savages came up to him and cried, f What 
is this you have said? I also desire to be saved.' It was with 
unutterable emotion that these first words of hope were listened 

to. Tears of gratitude flowed apace " But we must abridge : 

" The first church was built in 1747, at Hernuth, where 230 Green- 
landers, 35 of them baptised, were settled. New settlements 
became from time to time necessary, and thus in 1758 Lichtenfeld 
was founded; Lichlenau in 1774; and Friedrichsthal in 1824. In 
spite of famine and contagious diseases, the Mission has continued 
to prosper. The Greenlanders now ha^e the New Testament, a 
hymn-book, and some tracts in their mother tongue. The chil- 
dren in the schools show much aptitude. The four stations include 
a population of 6,000, and of these 800 are communicants V 

Missionaries, who have to earn their bread by the labour of their 
hands, are not the men to purchase converts ! 

Some persons may trace these conversions to the influence of go- 
vernment, but in fact the Missionaries are not only left to them- 
selves ; they are often embarrassed and hindered by the temporal 
power. Thus the East India Company have given their sanction to 



1. History of Evangelical Missions, vol. II, p. 144 and folowing, 



313 



heathen festivals under the fear of exciting popular insurrections, 
and the Missionaries have in this manner been brought into hostile 
contact with those who ought to have supported them in their work. 
It has also been asserted that it is easy to turn the ignorant. Those 
who say so forget that ignorance and fanaticism united oppose the 
strongest resistance to change of any kind. Men capable of throw- 
ing themselves under the chariot- wheels of an idol are not the 
subjects ready to worship a God who is spirit and truth. Women 
prompt to mount the funeral pile of a deceased husband, and there 
to meet a frightful martyrdom in his honour, do not seem particu- 
larly apt recipients of the mild piety of the Gospel. And yet Suttees 
are abolished, and the car of Juggernaut no longer rolls over pros- 
trate victims... One feature of Protestant Missions, and it is the 
last, is the preparation of native converts for the Missionary work. 
Thus " a Chinese association has been formed at Hong-Kong, and 
the number of preachers already furnished by it is 112 \ " 

We would confess that these scattered traits afford but a faint 
reflexion of the real character of Protestant Missions. Gladly would 
we give its portrait as exhibited in all the varying regions of the 
globe. In the vast Isle of Ceylon, for instance, " where the in- 
fluence of the heathen priest is fast passing away; where the idol 
temples are decaying from the failure of their revenues, and where 
heathen festivals are no longer regarded, schools are scattered all 
over the island; Christian knowledge is progressing; services for 
Christian worship are everywhere opened; the natives are em- 
ployed in building churches for themselves. The Holy Scriptures 
are in request. The printing-press diffuses millions of tracts in 
four languages, and the Missionaries do not suffice for the work 2 . " 

But our limits do not allow us to enter into the details of a work 
vast as the earth itself : 15 millions given annually by the Pro- 
testant Churches; 2,000 missionaries leaving their homes for 
distant lands; 800,000 Pagans converted, and whole countries 
brought under the influence of the Gospel. Such is the state of a 
work which we admire, but have no longer the courage to compare. 

Our parallels terminate with this first volume. In the second, 
we shall resume the general question under new and not less lumi- 
nous forms. 



1. History of Evangelical Missions, vol. I, p. 251. — 2, Idem, p. 251 and folowing. 



) 

} 




TABLE OF CONTENTS 



FOR THE SECOND VOLUME. 



Pages. 

Spain in the i 6 th and 19 th centuries . . . „ . „ » . . . 1 

England in the 16 t!l and 19 th centuries. ......... 61 

Catholicism on the Throne in Italy Ill 

Protestantism on the Cross in France .......... 183 

The Objections Examined ...... 247 

General Summary „ . . . . 295 

Future Destinies of Protestant Nations. . . . . , . . . . 309 

Inferences. . . . ....... . . . .";->'-• • 317 



THE END. 



M. YIALAT and f° , Printer: LAGXY. 



! 



CATHOLIC NATIONS 

AND 

PROTESTANT NATIONS 



COMPARED IN THEIR THREEFOLD RELATION TO 



WEALTH , KNOWLEDGE, AND MORALITY. 



SPAIN 

IN THE \ 6 111 AND 19 th CENTURIES. 



Hitherto we have drawn a parallel between the Catholic and 
Protestant nations of modern times. It has not been difficult to 
discern on which side the superiority lies. The proof appears to us 
at once clear and complete. It is, however, necessary to he doubly 
armed with reason to bring conviction home to prejudiced minds. 
Impelled by a desire to gain over the most obstinate, we shall now 
resume the question with new data, and consider it in a different 
light. We shall no longer compare one nation with another, but 
a Catholic or a Protestant nation with itself, and for such compa- 
rison to be possible it is necessary to take a view of the nation at 
different periods. By comparing its former with its present state, 
we shall discover how much it has gained or lost. This gain or 
loss will be owing, if not entirely, at least in part, to its religious 
faith. If it be found that one nation has been constantly improv- 
ing, while another has been as invariably retrograding, shall we 
not be led to suppose that its religious persuasion has contributed 
in a certain degree to these results? And if this rapid or retro- 
grade movement follows the same direction as that which we have 

T. II. i 



2 

already remarked in the nations professing the same religious 
faith, will not the conclusions already drawn in the reader's mind 
be considerably strengthened ? We think so. We have now only 
to let the facts speak for themselves. 

We shall examine, on the one hand, Spain, a country essentially 
Catholic ; and on the other England, a country essentially Protes- 
tant. Oar examination will begin from the sixteenth century for 
each of these nations, whose progress we shall trace down to our 
own time. Neither of them, assuredly, is now what it then was. 
Which of the two has gained, which lost, in wealth, in knowledge, 
in morals ? Let us examine this question, beginning by Spain. 

Never was a nation so completely under the influence of Catholi- 
cism as Spain. Italy herself, subdivided into several nations, each 
having different tendencies, crossed by hostile armies, visited by 
foreigners, Italy has not remained so hermetically closed against 
all external influence as Catholic Spain, founded by Ferdinand, 
guarded by legions of monks, purged from all heresy by the In- 
quisition, and finally crystallised in Romanism by policy, by the 
Church, and even by the popular instincts. Let us now see what 
Catholicism, with this admirable concourse of wills, of interests, 
and of power, will make of the Spanish nation in three centuries. 
In order to measure the distance, let us mark well the starting- 
point. What Avas the state of Spain on the eve of the religious Re- 
formation, which she so completely avoided ? 

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Spain might, with a 
view to our subject, be divided into two parts, one subjected to the 
Moors, the other to the Christians, We are at the eve of the con- 
quest of Grenada, the last bulwark of the Ottoman power ; the 
Church is about to inherit the lands and the intellectual wealth of 
the Mahometans. Let us now draw up an inventory of what these 
are about to leave it. We will devote a few words, at first, to an 
account of the state of the arts and sciences among the Arabs of 
these regions. We shall present only a simple nomenclature, 
abridging, much against our inclination, the work of a learned 
professor of the Sorbonne, M. Roseew Saint-Hilaire : — 

"Sciences. — Among the different branches of the human facul- 
ties, one of those that were most zealously cultivated by the Arabs 
in Andalusia was history... Their great superiority over the 
contemporary Spanish chroniclers consists in their giving us a 
deeper insight into the familiar life of peoples and kings J . 



1. M. Roseew Saint-Hilaire, p. 178. 



"We shall not attempt to pass in review the poets ; a volume 
would not suffice 1 . 

"A branch of literature in which the Arabs have preserved an 
indisputable superiority, is the tale and the novel 2 . 

"Statistics, a science so recent in Europe, and geography, were 
also successfully studied by them 3 . 

"But the art which the Arabs cultivated with the greatest success 
was incontestably medicine. Pharmacy made great progress among 
them. Many terms still in use are purely Arabic, such as syrup, 
julep, etc 4 . 

"Physical and mathematical science may be reckoned among the 
true claims to glory of the Arabs 5 . Our system of numeration, 
practised by them, was communicated to the west by the learned 
Gerbert, who had studied at Cordova. Algebra owes its name to 
one of their mathematicians 6 . Trigonometry, cultivated by the 
Arabs, is indebted to them for its present form 7 . But astronomy 
was especially their study; the obliquity of the ecliptic, the annual 
motion of the equinoxes, and the duration of the tropical year, were 
all ascertained by them. Although the glory of the discovery of 
the solar system was to belong to a later century, the motions of the 
heavenly bodies and the sun's disk were studied with the greatest 
care, as well as eclipses; and modern science is not wholly un- 
indebted to the labours of these Arabs 8 . 

"With the progress of civilisation vast colleges were erected, in 
which youth were instructed in the sciences, etc 9 ." 

Fine-Arts. — " The art of music acquired, among the Arabs, a 
regularity which it never attained among the Greeks: and, as to 
architecture, the fortress of the Alhambra, a vast enclosure of walls 
scarcely less than a league in circumference, is the finest specimen 
of the military architecture of the Arabs ; and those red towers, 
with walls eighteen feet thick, still rise threateningly above the 
Vega of Grenada, which they have ceased to defend 10 . " 

Nevertheless, as it was perhaps difficult to derive advantage from 
the knowledge of a nation hated and despised, especially when this 
knowledge was deposited in a language unknown to the mass, let 
us not dwell too much on sciences more or less abstract, but take a 
view of the vulgar knowledge of absolute necessity ; that of agric ul- 
ture, in which all classes are interested, and which the poorest may ■ 
learn and practise. What was the condition of the soil left by the 



i. M. Roseew Saint-Hilaire, p. 181. — 2. idem, p. 185. — 3. idem, p. 186. — k. idem, 

p. 194. — 5. Idem, p. 194. — 6. Idem, p. 19o. — 7. Idem, p. 196. — 8. Idem. p. 197. — 
9. Idem, p. 199. — 10. Idem, p. 218. 



4 



Moors to the Christians who expelled them ? Let us again hear our 
author : — " 

Agriculture. — "The Arabs made immense progress in agricul- 
ture. The art of manuring and watering the soil had been carried 
to its highest perfection. A narrow runnel of water, by means of 
trenches skilfully arranged, conveyed fertility over a vast extent 
of ground . Aqued nets were constructed, artificial ponds (albuheras) 
were dug to serve as reservoirs for water. All the exotic trees which 
the climate so varied of the Peninsula permitted them to cultivate, 
and the balmy flowers of the East, which the Arabs prize as highly 
as perfumes, were introduced by them. Thus Spain owes to the 
Arabs her rice, cotton, sugar-cane, saffron, and the date-tree, which 
ripens on all the coast, and especially at Elche, near Alicant, where 
an entire forest of them is to be seen. Besides, the number of 
Arabic works on agriculture would alone prove to what a high 
degree of perfection the art had been brought in Spain. 

"NotMng equals the beauty of the spectacle which must have 
been presented, in that golden age of Spanish agriculture, by the 
rich hucria of Valencia, one of the most productive and best watered 
spots on earth; the picturesque Vega of Grenada, a garden of olive 
and orange-trees, thirty leagues in length, watered by five rivers, 
and sheltered by the Sierra Novada, the. highest of all Spain; the 
fertile basin of the Guadalquivir, stretching far out of sight along 
the verdant swells of the Sierra Morena, with thousands of villages 
grouped round Cordova, the queen of the valley." 

As might previously have been supposed, the development of 
industry kept pace with the progress of this admirable agriculture : 
ce Under the last Ommiades, the empire, on the very eve of its fall, 
had attained a degree of wealth and prosperity truly fabulous. 
The population daily increased in this favoured spot of earth, one 
of the most fertile on the globe. Silk, cotton, and cloth manufac- 
tories had been established in all parts of the kingdom, and the 
Arabs were especially renowned for their skill in dyeing leather and 
stuffs. To them Spain is indebted for indigo and cochineal, as 
well as for the beautiful coloured earthenware, so admired at the 
Alhambra. Lastly, the paper manufactured at Mecca from the 
year 88 of the Begira, was introduced into Spain in the twelfth 
century, and the Spaniards substituted linen for cotton, which the 
Arabs had used. The soil of the Peninsula abounded in mines of 
gold, silver, and mercury, and other metals less rare K " 



1. Roseew Saint-Hilaire, vol. vi, pp. 138 to 141. 



s 



Wo regret that it is not in our power to give more complete 
statistics of the prosperity of the Moors in Spain at the close of the 
fifteenth century ; hut the following lines may to a certain extent 
supply the place of such : "The pious indifference of governments 
founded on Islam ism never having permitted anything in the 
shape of a census, it is impossible to estimate, with any degree of 
certainty, the number of their subjects. We merely know from 
Conde, that besides the capital and the six provincial chief towns, 
Toledo, Merida, Saragossa, Valencia, Seville, and Tadmir, they 
reckoned eighty second-rate and three hundred third-rate towns, 
without mentioning villages , and towers or strongholds, that were 
innumerable. Far from being diminished by the fall of the 
Ommiade empire, this mass of inhabitants was further increased 
by the invasion of the Berbers, and we shall find the Almo- 
ravide Yussouf boasting that in his vast states of the Magreb and 
Spain the chotbah was recited for him from nineteen thousand 
pulpits l ." 

Abo at the same period, and even still more recently, Catholic 
Spain presented in this respect no less brilliant a picture. Her 
power especially extended over the Old and the New World. Let 
us hear, on this second part, another authority, M. Weiss, professor 
at the College de France : — 

" In the sixteenth century, the Spaniards turned to account every 
advantage the country possessed : while the nobility gave them- 
selves up to the profession of arms, the other classes enriched their 
country by assiduous labour. Agriculture was most especially ho- 
noured. The kingdom of Grenada, still inhabited by the flower 
of the descendants of the Arabs, everywhere displayed the produce 
of the finest agriculture in the world. The Vega of Grenada, 
watered by the Xenil, was renowned for its fertility, which was pro- 
digious... On all sides irrigation canals and reservoirs distributed 
water over the remotest and most barren tracts... Industry and 
commerce added still more to the prosperity of Spain... The 
most industrious nations of modern Europe had not yet succeeded 
in imparting to their embroideries and their silk, gold, and silver 
stuffs the solidity, elegance, and perfection which we admire after 
the lapse of two centuries, in the products of the ancient manufac- 
tories of Spain. . . Lyons, Nimes, Paris, have never possessed manu- 
factories comparable to those which formerly existed at Toledo, 
at Grenada, at Seville, at Segovia, although, undoubtedly, their 



I. Roseew Saint-Hi'.aire, vol. vr, pp. 148 and 149. 



G 



manufactories are infinitely superior to those of Spain at the present 
day. The development of trade was equal to that of industry. A 
minister of Philip the Second asserted, in an assembly of the Cortes, 
that at the fair held at Medina del Campo, in 1563, business was 
transacted to the amount of six hundred and sixty two million five 
hundred thousand francs... A multitude of trading vessels set 
sail every year from the ports of Valencia , Carthagena, Malaga, 
Cadiz, and conveyed to Italy, Asia Minor, Africa, and the East In- 
dies, the products of the national industry. In 1386, the number 
of trading vessels in the Spanish ports was said to exceed a thou- 
sand... More than fifteen hundred vessels, of an inferior class, 
contributed to give activity to commerce. The smallest towns on 
the coasts took part in this commercial movement. The mercan- 
tile navy of Spain was then superior to that of France, and even 
to that of England ; but nothing equalled the prosperity of Se- 
ville : that city, said a writer of the age of Philip the Second, is the 
capital of all the merchants in the world. Andalusia has become 
the centre of the earth. 

f Spain likewise reigned by her great superiority in the arts, 
and in literature... Sculpture and architecture reached a high 
degree of perfection under Juan de Badajoz, Miguel de An- 
cheta, and their successors. This period was also that of the fine 
Spanish music ; music simple, grand, pathetic. Spain gave birth 
at that period to composers of the first order, principally in the reli- 
gious kind. The archives of the chapters of Toledo, Valencia, 
Seville, Burgos, contained numberless invaluable treasures,.. In 
literature there was equal progress, equal lustre. The drama attain- 
ed a degree of perfection to which it had risen in no other country 
of Europe. This country produced great men, whose various 
talents recall Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. . . Epic and lyrical 
poetry and history found likewise worthy interpreters... All 
Europe resounded with the glory of Garcilaso, surnamed the 
Spanish Petrarch; of Herrera, the Divine; of Montemayor, of Ponce 
de Leon, and of Quevedo, whom a severe judge did not hesitate to 
compare to Voltaire... By degrees Spanish literature served as a 
model to other nations; its influence penetrated as far as England; 
but France yielded to it more than any other nation. It is perhaps 
to Spain that we owe the prince of our comic poets. . . It was long a 
custom in France, in Italy, in England, and in a part of Germany, 
to send to Madrid young men, distinguished either by fortune or 
birth, in order that they might learn Castilian manners and polite- 
ness. The palaces of the Spanish ambassadors were in foreign 



7 



countries the resort of the most elegant society, and Spanish diplo- 
macy everywhere possessed that influence and that moral supe- 
riority which France did not acquire until the reign of Louis the 
Fourteenth 1 /' 

Such was Spain in the sixteenth century. Let us at once exa- 
mine her present state : u What I have to exhibit to you/' says 
M. Gueroult, " is the spectacle of an agony which cannot come to an 
end, an all-pervading confusion to which no term can he assigned, 
the certain and progressive ruin of a nation that, for a whole cen- 
tury, dictated laws to Europe, that inhabits the richest and most 
fertile soil perhaps under Heaven, but a nation so disheartened by 
false experiments, that it feels itself perish, and watches its own 
decline, as it were, with the resignation of a fatalist, and from this 
depression vain attempts are made to raise it with the comfort of 
sonorous words and sounding phrases. Others may employ their 
efforts to show you order and progress organised on paper, enthu- 
siasm reigning in official proclamations, victory succeeding victory 
without intermission in bulletins, and lastly the Cortes plying, 
with gravity befitting the curial chair of the ancient Roman se- 
nators, the great work of national regeneration. Our task, more 
melancholy and stern, will be to bring the broad and sad day- 
light of facts to dispel all these brilliant phantoms; to show you 
the evil in its whole extent, and let your ears perceive what a 
hollow sound is returned by those granite foundations so miracu- 
lously raised by the hands of weakness, improvidence, and prodi- 
gality. I cannot promise to complete the task I have undertaken; 
there is a point where the pen drops from the writer's hand : it 
is not possible to analyse nothingness V 

" Here, I confess, I ani greatly embarrassed. Is there or is there 
not a government in Spain? Who commands, who obeys? where 
is government, where is power? where is strength and authority? 
and how is it possible to make you, the fortunate inhabitants of a 
well-organised country, understand the sort of hap-hazard that 
here regulates all things?... That the country is in a state of 
revolution is but too evident; that it feels, if not the serious desire, 
at least an imperative want, of order first, and afterwards of nu- 
merous reforms in every branch of public administration; that the 
re-establishment of the ancient absurd system which has laid asleep 
for nearly three hundred years, and still lulls the already too apa- 
thetic genius of the nation, has become odious to a large portion of 



1. Weiss, Introduction, p. 13, etc. — 2. Guerouit, pp. 335 to 337. 



8 



the population, and that this re-establishment is well nigh an im- 
possibility, is beyond a doubt 

" There are, on the old trunk of the Spanish monarchy, branches 
so rotten, that it is difficult to conceive how, when better times 
render reform possible, the legislator will be able to overcome a 
contagion which, from the institutions, has passed into the manners 
of the nation, and which, having been tolerated time out of mind, 
has obtained a -rank among things acknowledged and consecrated. 
At the head and front of these careless ulcers must be placed the 
administration of justice. Do not expect, however, from me a 
minute analysis of this deplorable subject. The story of abuses 
would never end. As to the history of the institution, a word will 
suffice : it does not exist. In what concerns justice it is necessary, 
not to reform, but to create 2 . 

"If you have a law-suit in Spain, it is to the escribano that 
application must be made in your behalf; if you have had the 
misfortune, in a moment of necessity or of passion, to take the 
pocket of a stranger for your own, or to thrust the blade of your 
navaja too deeply between the ribs of a friend, again it is the 
escribano that must be applied to, for he it is that draws up the 
report of your case, and the judgment likewise, which is signed by 
the judge in charge. If the judge is hard-hearted, the escribano 
knows what arguments will make him relent; it is he that will 
inform you exactly how many ounces the death of a man will 
amount to, and if you give him sufficient encouragement, he will 
find means, in case of need, to bring you back from the lowest 
depths of hell. The blackest prison, the deepest dungeon, the 
closest and thickest bars, nothing can resist the power of the 
escribano*." 

" Independently of venality (the besetting sin of almost all the 
magistracy in Spain), there exists, in the legislation itself, various 
causes of abuse. I shall content myself with pointing out to you a 
few provisions of criminal jurisprudence, which exercise a more 
direct and more corrupting influence over morals. It would seem 
as if the fixed idea of the legislator had been to have his outlays 
reimbursed at any price, and all his expenses paid ; this result has 
been attained ; but you will now see at what cost. A man is assas- 
sinated in the street; he cries for help. It is still early ; people are 
passing through the street ; house -doors are still open, and lights are 
seen in the windows. If such a thing happened in one of our 



1. Gudroult, pp.340, 341. — 2. Idem, p. 394. — 3. Idem, p. 399. 



9 



streets, every body would hasten to the assistance of the victim, 
a crowd would gather round him, the whole neighbourhood would 
be in an uproar. In Spain, when a murdered man cries for help, 
what happens ? the passers-by flee away with their utmost speed, the 
doors are closed, the lights are extinguished ; the street, a minute ago 
so full of life and lighted up on all sides, becomes a gloomy desert; 
in Tain the victim's cries redouble, terror has spread silence round 
him, and the murderers may consummate their crime in perfect 
security. Whence arises this dreadful selfishness ? is it the assassins 
they fear? No, it is justice ; for if, yielding to an instinctive feeling 
of humanity, you come to the assistance of the sufferer, and fall into 
the hands of justice, the first act of justice will be to seize you as a 
witness, and if unfortunately the murdered man or his family are 
not in a condition to pay the expenses of the law proceedings, it is on 
you, the witness, that the burden will devolve, and in this manner 
justice may be lawfully held guilty of the murder committed, and of 
the cowardly selfishness of all those hidden witnesses who held their 
breath for fear of betraying their presence. 

"One shudders at the dreadful consequences of this fiscal avidity 
of justice. At Madrid, last year, an old man was assassinated in the 
street; an application was made on the part of justice to his son, to 
know if the latter intended to make his complaint. — ' I ! ' replied 
the young man, 'you are mistaken, this is no business of mine, I do 
not know that man! 3 The unfortunate son was right ; if he had 
made his complaint, the law would have stripped him to the skin, 
and converted all his property into waste paper. Can we, after this, 
wonder at the hideous acts which occur too frequently in Spain ? 
should we not rather be surprised to find that some virtue yet 
subsists in a people who have been for ages wrought upon by so 
many active principles of demoralisation i V 

"The brotherhood of thieves, in Spain, has passed from the 
militant to the triumphant state; their power is undisputed, and 
they have for their support prescription and established rights. 
Justice, divested of its ancient prejudices, negotiates instead of 
combating, compounds instead of chastising, and evinces towards 
that respectable corporation the most touching regard, and behaves 
in the most fraternal manner. A few instances, taken at random, 
will show you what remarkable progress the spirit of association has 
made among this body. « 

"There was, a little time since, on the confines of the kingdom 

I. Gueroult, p. 400 to 403. 



10 

of Valencia and of Lower Arragon, an alcade, who imagined the 
following ingenious composition : the fines imposed on robbers are 
generally divided into three parts : one for the informer, another 
for the alcade, a third for the judges of the royal court. Now, the 
above-mentioned alcade , having carefully calculated the average 
produce of these fines, thought of making a sort of contract with the 
court : he took the engagement to pay to the court, one year with 
another, a fixed amount representing its average share of the profits, 
while he accepted for himself all the chances of the undertaking, of 
which the profit, as well as the loss, was to be entirely his. The 
bargain was made, and our alcade, desirous, naturally enough, to 
regulate his income, imagined the following combination : he raised 
his police-force to abetter footing, gave encouragement to informers, 
and proceeded to take as many robbers as he could. When once he 
had them in prison, he began to extort money from them, to bleed 
them without mercy. When their resources were exhausted, and 
their wives had brought the last mite, and the family had joined 
their efforts to pay the prisoner's ransom, you perhaps imagine that 
he sent the prisoner to the galleys ? No, our clever magistrate, true 
to his word, simply released his thief, who, shrunk and emaciated 
with the prison fare, and completely ruined, not having a real left 
in his pocket, lied from his prison to the highway like a raging wolf, 
scoured the country, and, eager to make up for lost time, accom- 
plished in six months the w T ork of two years. All the environs were 
filled with alarm. People scarcely ventured abroad. Complaints 
buzzed about the ears of the alcade, who remained unmoved, and 
feigned not to hear them ; he had formed his plan, and at length, 
when he deemed that his thief had sufficiently retrieved former 
losses, the worthy magistrate roused himself from his lethargy and 
displayed wonderful activity, which, in the space of a few weeks, 
brought for the second time into his toils the hero of the high school, 
who was then to undergo a new bleeding not less copious or less often 
repeated than the former one, and at the end of a few months an 
inconceivable fatality caused the robber to find for the second time 
a means of escaping, before even his case could be brought before 
the judge. By this ingenious system, applied with a truly Arra- 
gonese perseverance, the court was regularly paid, the robber who 
eluded the galleys lied from prison a ruined but a free man, and 
ready to retrieve his losses : the alcade made his fortune* and every 
body, except the public, was satisfied *. 



1. GuSronlt, pp. 405 to 407. 



i I 



" Would you believe that to this very day the wretches who 
assassinated Quesada are proceeding with impunity to search for 
his son, w r ho lias been threatened with the same fate? Would you 
believe that the assassins are known by their names, and yet remain 
unpunished ? Would you believe that the lewdest rabble have been 
allowed to go and vociferate impure songs under the windows of 
the poor widow? And, to crown all, would you believe that the 
government which tolerates such abominations has the effrontery 
to affect exhortations and speeches on public order 1 ?" 

"In Spain, w T here the police is a nonentity, the robber who takes 
no pains to conceal himself, but attacks you in broad daylight and 
by open force, is the king of the highway. He is a sort of indepen- 
dent sovereign, who makes incursions on a hostile territory. For 
this reason, far from being an object of execration, he is almost 
always admired by the people, and praised and celebrated in 
popular strains, which perpetuate the memory of his achieve- 
ments^ so that, by virtue of the immortality conferred by poetry, 
the name of Jose Maria, the famous Andalusian brigand, has grown, 
for the people, into something equivalent to that of the Gid, or any 
other hero of past ages. Add to such moral predispositions the 
influence of present circumstances, misery, the example of the 
bands of Cabrera and others, the powerlessness of the government 
to protect the people since it has hardly strength sufficient to protect 
itself, and you will easily conceive that highway robbery, favoured 
by so many united causes, may become one of the most threaten- 
ing features of the socia] dissolution towards which this country 
seems advancing with great strides 2 ." 

That highway robbery has become a national profession in Spain, 
that the Spaniard turns highwayman as the Savoyard turns porter, 
and the Auvergnat water-carrier, seems at first hard to believe ; to 
convince us of such a fact, it is necessary that more voices than one 
should repeat it. Let us hear it affirmed again, in the Revue Bri- 
t a unique ; — 

" As to the people, T will ask how the Spaniards have dis- 
tinguished themselves from the remotest times, unless it be as 
assassins, or what amounts to the same, as guerilleras? What 
courage is there in cutting off unfortunate stragglers, in surpris- 
ing the wounded, in drawing a few isolated detachments into 
ambuscades, and afterwards massacring them? A blow struck 
secretly and dishonestly is the blow of a coward, and it is rare that 

t. GuSl'Oult, p. 46. — 2. Idem, p. 134. 



I 



12 

the Spaniard, either in war or in private quarrels, strikes in any 
other way. Always ready to plunge his knife into the body of his 
unsuspecting adversary, he has no notion of a fair and open combat 
with equal arms It is to be inferred from M. Ford's confes- 
sions that the Spanish banditti, who make such a noble figure in 
novels, are the least adventurous, the most cowardly of their species, 

in any country It cannot be denied that Spain is the country 

of Europe in which the ancient system of robbery by force of arms 
on the highway has undergone the least change. 

"In the first rank, among the robbers, are the ladrones , or 
robbers on a large scale. These are the regularly-organised bands, 
of from eight to fourteen individuals, well armed and equipped, 
under the orders of a chief. The robbers of this class are the 
most dangerous of all ; and as they scarcely ever attack travellers 
without being sure of success, ancl without having taken all pos- 
sible precautions, resistance is generally useless, and can only 
occasion fatal accidents. The wisest course in such cases is to yield, 
and to obey the summons boca a bajo, boca a tierra (not a word ! 
lie down on the ground !) a summons which admits of no refusal. 

" The second order of highway robbers is that of the rat, ratero. 
The rat is despised, but no less dangerous on that account : he is 
neither regularly trained to the calling, nor organised; but should 
an opportunity arise for plunder, he avails himself of it, and then 
returns to his ordinary occupations. Thus it frequently happens 
that when strangers pass a night in some town or village, two or 
three ruffians prepare an ambuscade for the following day, in strict 
conformity with the proverb : opportunity makes the thief. 

u The ratelliro, or little rat, rarely attacks any but the isolated 
and defenceless traveller, who, if he is robbed, has only himself 
to blame, for you must never tempt the Spaniard to do any little 
piece of business of this nature. The shepherd feeding his flock, 
the labourer at his plough, the vintner in his vineyard, have each 
their gun, a weapon ostensibly destined to provide for their per- 
sonal safety, but which enables them at the same time to attack 
those who, for their protection, have only their heels and their 
virtue V 

Where such customs prevail, who will be astonished at the fol- 
lowing statement of our author? "Laws are enacted, but none 
obey them ; proclamations are issued, which are heeded by none. 
The people are complimented for their moderation when they have 



1. lievue Britannique, 18-46, May and June, pp. 135 to 143. 



13 



just tolerated some infamous atrocity; so that two Spains have 
been formed; one, a model of a country — a free, powerful, heroic, 
indomitable people, a people of great men, commanded by chiefs 
greater still, who succeed in whatever they undertake, the Spain of 
newspapers and proclamations; but go farther, penetrate more 
deeply, and you will then come to the true Spain, ruined, torpid, 
given to fatalism, dislocated, without any administration, or 
finances with no public spirit, stained with civil war, wearied with 
diplomacy, protocols, constitutions, asking from Heaven, who re- 
fuses the gift, a man, not even a great man, but an intelligent, 
energetic, and honest man 

" The vice, the scourge of Spain, is a corrupt administration, 
defective in its mode of action; a torpor and apathy which have 
given to the most absurd abuses the consecration of ages V 

From the summit of the social scale, the magistrates, let us 
descend to its last degree, the beggars; and let us again hear 
our author: "As you penetrate farther into Arragon, Spanish 
misery, that misery to which nothing can be compared, displays 
itself in all its hideous luxury. At Jaca, a fortified town com- 
manding the mountains, at Guerrea, a wretched halting-place 
where travellers stop to breakfast, you are assailed by legions 
of beggars ; children are seen in the market-place rolling naked in 
the dust, and killing each other's vermin. Visit the most impure 
and wretched quarters of Lyons and Rouen, and even these will not 
give you an idea of that squalid and disgusting misery. Our 
beggars seem to suffer from misery and filth; these live on it, dwell 
in it, are born and die in it ; it is to them a second nature. For 
the rest, setting aside the incidents and the poetry, you find in 
the filthy inns of that region the physiognomy of the hotels 
of the time of Don Quixote, vast halls supported by pillars. 
It is useless to speak of the odious i ratatouilles ' that are set 
before you there. You are twenty leagues from France, and you 
might fancy yourself at a distance of two thousand. The love 
of gain itself has not had strength to overcome that natural indo- 
lence, that carelessness of the morrow, wdiich raises between France 
and Spain a barrier higher and more difficult to pass over than the 
Pyrenees. 

" Another circumstance that astonishes the traveller, on his 
entrance into Spain, is the venality, I had almost said the mendicity, 
of Custom-house officers. . . A compromise may be made with them 



1. GultouU, pp 48 4P. — 2. Idem, p. 170. 



14 



which will enable you to import the entire kingdom of France into 
Spain, if you have a mind to do so. You have only to slip a small 
piece of money into their hands; if you forget to do this, they will 
remind you of it, and you may. without shocking the sense of 
propriety of these honest functionaries, give them your alms in 
public, in the presence of twenty persons ; they will not shrink 
from it." 

You will not be surprised to find under the feet of this idle and 
mendicant population a fertile soil neglected : " The beauty of the 
Spanish soil is a classical and well-established fact ; the romances 
are full of its praise, the ballads are inexhaustible in their descriptions 
of the citron groves, and of the fertility of this climate loved by 
Heaven... That these descriptions were once true, I am willing to 
believe, but at present we should seek in vain all over France, 
including the Landes, for regions as naked, barren, and depopulated 
as the valley of Gallego, leading to Saragossa. This soil, in appearance 
so sterile, is capable of receiving useful plantations : many trees, 
such as the fir, the oak, the chesnut, would nourish there admirably, 
and would besides impregnate the soil with a humidity which it 
greatly needs ; but it happens with this as with many other things 
in Spain ; the Spaniards have the power, but lack the will ; they see 
treasures lying at their feet, but fear the labour of stooping to take 
them up x . " 

" This soil, at once fertile and uncultivated, this desert, created 
by listlessness and sloth, on the border of France, those populations 
so beautiful and yet so wretched, so favoured by nature and so 
abandoned by human providence, that stubbornness of temper, that 
attachment to the past in men who themselves appear to be only 
a generation of the twelfth century lost in our own, that spirit of 
individuality and isolation, at a period when individuals seem all 
on the point of being absorbed iu the bosom of I know not what 
gigantic unity, do not all these passing observations, here collected 
on the highways, lead to the detection of the internal malady which 
preys upon the vitals of Spain-? " 

" Spain, reduced to a state of torpor for three centuries past by a 
system of ignorance, subjected to two foreign dynasties, one of 
which began by cruelty, to end by weakness, and the other almost 
always absorbed by court intrigues, Spain is endeavouring, at the 
present day, with innumerable pangs, to burst this crust of ignorance 
beneath which she has been groaning too long 3 . " 



1. GlierOUlt, pp. 5 to 9. — 2. Idem, p, iG. — 3. Idem, p, -2D. 



Id 

All this does not prevent the Spaniard from entertaining the highest 
possible opinion of himself : Hear him speak : " A whim, which, 
by dint of exaggeration, occasions more harm than a real scourge, 
is magniloquence in speeches. . . Here, a general, writing his report 
of a hostile encounter to a Minister of War, stated that he had shed 
tears of admiration at the sight of the exploits of his intrepid soldiers; 
it was an affair in which two hundred of the enemy had been slain. 
Gather together all their pompous words, would you not think the 
nation breathed enthusiasm through every pore ; that it was 
continually inflamed with ardour, that its ordinary feelings were 
the Warmest* the most uncontrollable, the most energetic ? After 
this, interrogate facts, peruse, if you have patience, this history, full 
of sterile wishes, of abortive attempts, behold the apathy, the 
profound indifl'erence, the neutrality in which every one enfolds 
himself, the silence and solitude that surround the government, the 
incapacity of generals who know neither how to combine a plan of 
operations, nor how to follow up or turn to account an advantage ; 
compare, I say, words with things, and draw your conclusion i . h 

Our author sums up the Spanish character as follows : " The 
Spaniards are materialists in their affections, their creeds, their 
institutions. They have no notion of religion without monks, 
processions, and ceremonies; they must have relics and miracles, 
religious orders in picturesque costumes, and convents where not 
only prayers, but bread and soup, are to be obtained 2 . " 

And this is not the character of the Spaniard of any particular 
province; he will be found the same throughout the kingdom; in 
La Mancha, for instance, M. Gueroult tells us : " The inhabitant 
of la Mancha, who has little to hope for from his labour, is in 
consequence idle and vagrant; consumed by misery and filth, the 
roads are infested with beggars and with ragged children, bearing 
in their arms other children entirely naked. All, young and old, 
are beggars, and habits of sloth are almost the only inheritance 
faithfully transmitted from one to another by these degraded 
generations. I need not say that the Manchegos enjoy, among their 
neighbours, a detestable reputation ; the inhabitants willingly take 
to smuggling, to a wandering life, to robbery ; they make no scruple 
of lying in ambush behind a little fir-wood, or in the midst of a 
despoblado, to wait for and to rob the coach that crosses la Mancha 
With only two or three escopeteros on the roof, each armed with a 
good gun, and a belt filled with cartridges. Thus, it may be said 



1. Gueroult, pp. 75, 76. — 2. Idem, p. 92. 



16 



that one half of la Mancha lives at the expense of the other half. 
In every inn at which we alighted to take refreshments , we were 
always informed that outlaws had passed that way two, three, or 
four times, and that, for fear of a surprise, the kitchen utensils were 
kept half the time at the bottom of the well l . " 

Of Valencia he has nothing more favourable to say : " As to the 
corruption of the country round Valencia, it is enormous; this 
region has the reputation of being the portion of Spain in which 
most crimes are perpetrated. Murder, robbery, broils, wounds 
inflicted, amount, in the criminal statistics of Valencia, to a 
proportion comparatively enormous. Thus, in the year 1832 alone, 
out of about 700,000 persons comprised within the jurisdiction of 
the audiencia of Valencia, the number of murders and infanticides 
amounted to 210; that of wounds occasioned by quarrels to 5il; 
that of robberies to 361 ; lastly, of sentences to death there were 3i. 
If to these are added condemnations to the galleys, which are here 
scarcely ignominious, and crimes unpunished from not finding or 
not wishing to find the culprit, which last amounted in 1835 to 831 , 
you may form an idea of the species of moral barbarism which 
desolates these beautiful regions. . . When a man is assassinated in 
Valencia, a small black cross is nailed on the nearest wall with this 
inscription; Here died by misfortune (aqui murio de desgracia), 
such and such a person, such a day of such a year. Now, to give 
you an idea of the number of these expiatory monuments, it will 
be sufficient to tell you that in one of the most populous streets of 
Valencia, that of St. Vincent, which is of nearly the same length 
as the portion of the rue Vivienne extending from the Palais Royal 
to the Place de la Bourse, I counted the other day eleven crosses 
destined to perpetuate the memory of eleven nefarious accidents. 
If then the Valencian passes generally for a traitor and a coward, if 
the Andalusian himself, who makes so light of his own work, 
expresses so loudly his contempt for Valencian cowardice, it must 
be allowed that this bad reputation is not entirely usurped 2 . " 

We have sufficiently quoted M. Gueroult. The reader must be 
desirous of hearing the evidence of more than one person : we will, 
then, produce a series of testimonies which by their unanimity will 
ob'tain credit for all that precedes. 

To the evidence of an eye witness let us first add that of an 
historian, esteemed and greatly admired by the French Catholics i 
" There is a great country, of which indeed I speak out of regard, 

i. Gueroult, pp. 309, 310. - 2. Idem, pp. 323 10 327. 



M 

out of respect for a noble and unfortunate people, rather than from 
necessity, I allude to Spain. Human intellect and human society 
have sometimes appeared there in all their glory, but the instances 
of such are isolated facts scattered here and there in Spanish history, 
like palm-trees amid the sands of the desert. The fundamental 
character of civilisation, general and continuous progress, seems 
denied in Spain, to •the human mind as well as to society. The 
country presents the spectacle of solemn immovability or fruitless 
change. Seek for a great idea or a great social amelioration, a 
philosophical system or an improvement fertile in results, that 
Europe owes to Spain , and you will find none. This nation has 
been isolated in Europe ; from Europe it has received little, to Eu- 
rope it has given little. Its civilisation is of slight importance in 
the history of European civilisation K " 

To the impartial historian let us add the unimpassioned geogra- 
pher : cc Spain cannot, for its industry, be compared to the prin- 
cipal states of Europe. We must also observe that the manufac- 
tories of esparto, formerly so numerous and flourishing, seem to be 
almost annihilated. 

" The want of good roads, the small number of navigable rivers, 
canals, and hydraulic works destined to remedy that defect of the 
soil, as well as the unsafe condition of the high roads, almost en- 
tirely prevent all internal commerce. Navigation to remote regions 
has greatly diminished for some years past 2 . " 

" To Spain has been addressed the severe reproach of having 
neglected the sciences. Vailadolid, formerly a very flourishing city, 
is now greatly fallen and depopulated : in the time of its splendour 
it was said to contain more ihan 100,000 inhabitants; it has now 
only 21,000 K" 

After Balbi, let us quote Malte-Brun, better known and no less 
esteemed : " What evil genius has been able to paralyse or to 
corrupt so many causes of prosperity, and reduce to a population 
less than that of France by more than 14,000,000 souls the popu- 
lation of the Peninsula, which in extent exceeds France by more 
than 2,000 square leagues 4 ?" 

" The province of Madrid is one of those of New Castille in 
which the proud indolence of the Gastilians is most easily recog- 
nised. The inhabitants seem to disdain all kinds of industry; 
the small number of manufactories, and especially the mediocrity 
of their products, furnish us with the proof of this. The environs 

i. Guizot, pp. 18 and 19. — 2. Balbi, pp. 431 to 433. — 3. idem, pp. 438, 439. —4. Malte- 
Brun, \ol. vii, p. 486. 

T. IT. 2 



■is 



of the capital are unlike those of the other great cities of Europe ; 
here you do not witness the life and activity that reign everywhere 
round Paris and London. You have hardly left Madrid when you 
suddenly find yourself in a new country : in a few minutes you 
pass from a world of opulence and luxury into fields abounding 
with misery and filth. What was formerly said of the German 
traveller may to this day he applied to the peasant of Castille : the 
instruments he uses, his occupations, his dress, his food, bear the 
marks of ignorance and poverty. A sort of blind oredilection for 
what is old excludes all idea of improvement in matters connected 
with agriculture and the mechanical arts; and, to complete out' 
disgust at the sight of this miserable population, the high price of 
linen obliging the poor man to change only once a month, the 
result is a hideous unclean I iness, producing cutaneous diseases and 
the excessive increase of that vermin of which they mutually re- 
lieve one another in public, in villages, and in the populous quarters 
of large towns ; the population of Madrid is not more delicate in 
this respect than any other. 

" The constancy of women in their engagements almost com- 
pensates in the end for the shame of their immorality. Perhaps 
even to the multiplicity of these ties rather than to the care taken 
by the police to prohibit places of debauchery, Madrid owes the 
advantage of being free from the scandalous evil of prostitution *, " 

In contemplating such a society we cannot help desiring that a 
man of genius would rise from amidst the nation and raise his 
countrymen by his activity from their sloth, and by his self- 
denial from their immorality. Such a man there has been. Let 
us see how he succeeded : £e In the reign of Charles III a plan was 
formed for draining and peopling the richest mountains, so as to 
render their soils productive. Don Pablo Olavide, one of the 
statesmen in whom this happy idea originated, was appointed to 
carry -it into effect ; this he did with so much zeal and intelligence 
that he soon succeeded beyond his hopes : 58 villages or boroughs 
arose on the heights that command La Mancha and Andalusia, and 
formed under the name of Nuevas Poblaciones, a province whose 
chief town was called La Carolina, and which soon contained 
3,000 inhabitants. But the virtuous Olavide had the misfortune 
to draw upon himself the hatred of a capucin; he was denounced 
to the Inquisition for having uttered indiscreet language, and, 
after having pined in the prisons of the Holy Office, he was con- 



i. Malte-Bnui, vol. vn, p. 684. 



19 



demnccl to be confined during eight years in a monastery, declar- 
ed incapable of accepting any office, and despoiled of all his 
property l ." 

It is evident that the evil is in the nation, or rather in the 
principles with which it is imbued. Go to the neighbouring 
people, fostered in the same creed, and you will find the same 
manners : " In Portugal, everything that recalls the pleasures of 
the senses has irresistible power. The popular songs would be 
agreeable and graceful, if the words were not at times too licentious. 
The national dance, called the soffa, is lascivious to such a degree 
that one cannot help deploring the corruption of the people 2 . " 

" The fine arts are in a very unsatisfactory state, owing to the 
want of encouragement from the rich and from the government. 
Music is, we may say, the only art in which a few Portuguese have 
attained celebrity. Elementary public instruction is greatly 
neglected, and, with the exception of Spain, very inferior to Por- 
tugal in this respect, there are few countries in which the relative 
number of scholars is less considerable 3 . " 

But let us still add to the number of our witnesses ; after the 
impartial geographer let us consult the precise statistician : ff The 
deserts of Spain/' says Moreau de Jonnes, " which extend over half 
the country, lie under the most beautiful climate most favourable 
to the human species, and to the cultivation of plants that yield the 
richest and most abundant crops. These lands, covered with brush- 
wood and withered herbs, were, under the Moorish sway, of 
prodigious fertility; if properly watered and cultivated, they might 
now, as well as then, be made to resemble the flourishing plains of 
Lombardy k . " 

iC There no longer exist, in a civilised country, vasts deserts, like 
that of the province of Estramadura. In a country gifted by Pro- 
vidence with such ample agricultural resources, it is absurd, 
impolitic, dangerous, and inhuman, to allow a twelfth part of the 
population to earn a wretched livelihood by smuggling, robbing, and 
begging 5 . " 

Are all the products of this impoverished soil at least equally 
distributed? M. Jonnes answers : i( Arguelies calculated that the 
lands possessed by the clergy, added to those of the crown, extended 
to about a million and a half of fanegues, or 12, 170,000 hectares, 
making 6,460 square leagues, which is, within a few leagues, one- 
third of the entire surface of Spain. Thus, in crossing this country, 

1. Malte-Biun, vol. VII, p. 631. — 2. Idem, p. 535. 3. Idem, p. 537. — Moreau de 
Jonnes, p. 28. — 5. Idem, p. 131. 



20 



the traveller, every third league, crosses demesne or ecclesiastical 
property, and this is in general, says Arguelles, the most fertile and 
best situated l ." 

Does industry produce what agriculture does not yield? Our 
author solves the question : " The industrial produce, " says he, 
(( allows in Spain and Austria 30 francs to each inhabitant, in 
Prussia .40; in France 58; and in Great Britain 155. " 

This population, occupied neither with agriculture nor with 
industry, may be supposed to have at least time to attend to study. 
To what degree, then, is instruction diffused? " Spain," says our 
learned authority, "is of all countries in Europe, except Russia, that 
in which public instruction claims the least attention. The census 
of 1803 allowed only one student in 346 inhabitants; which is 
thirty-four times less than in Switzerland, Germany, the Nether- 
lands, England, Scotland, and Prussia, and twenty times less than 
in France at the present day 2 . " 

Without agriculture, industry, or instruction, what becomes of 
this nation ? You shall hear : (( Moncada estimated at 3,000,000 the 
number of Spaniards who wore no shirt for want of money to 
purchase one. Ortess has endeavoured to ascertain how many 
classes of vagrants exist in the Peninsula. He has found forty, 
designated by as many specific names forming part of the Spanish 
language. And indeed the civil history of the country shows that 
vagraucy is an inveterate disease. We discover by the ordinances 
from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, that vagrants stole 

children and made them lame, in order to excite compassion 

Compamanes calculated that, in 1788, every poor individual cost 
the state 300 reals yearly 3 . " 

Sloth and ignorance have made the beggar and the vagrant. 
What will now become of these vagrants and these beggars ? " The 
judicial statistics of Spain/' answers M.Jonnes, " present a series of 
extraordinary phenomena. We find in them a prodigious increase 
of open attacks upon individuals, with murder or attempt to 
murder. These statistics look like the annals of barbarous times, 
or of those modern nations who, like the Albanese, the Bosniates, 
the Morlacques, do not enjoy the blessings of social order, education, 
or the protection of laws \ " 

But our readers would perhaps prefer to the cold analyses of 
statistics the living pictures of the modern traveller. Let us then 
follow, in his pilgrimage through Spain, M. de Laborde, anesteem- 



1. Moreau de Jomies, p. 80. — 2. idem, p. 303. — 3- idem, p. 94. — -i. Idem, p. 299. 



21 



ed writer, attached to the French Court, itself connected with that 
of Spain, and we shall thus have all desirable guarantees for mo- 
deration, knowledge, and sincerity. In order not to alter in the 
slightest degree the testimony of a man who has seen and felt what 
he describes, we will not even endeavour to arrange what we 
borrow from him in the order which the subjects would seem to 
require, but we will accompany him wherever it pleases him to 
lead us. If our extracts are of considerable length, the interesting 
nature of the information they contain will prevent them from 
tiring the reader. M. de Laborde first explains why Spain has so 
few visitors : " The principal reasons, " says he, :e which have 
hitherto deterred travellers from visiting Spain, are the numberless 
inconveniences attending excursions through the country 1 . Highway 
robberies and murders being by no means of rare occurrence, it 
is necessary for those who travel to be well armed 2 . Spain is not 
renowned for its inns. A general complaint is made, and with 
too much reason, against the difficulties you have to contend with 
in seeking for a lodging. The houses disgust by their uncleanliness, 
and afford little comfort. The posadas are in general disgusting; 
you find in them at most some wooden bedsteads with old mattresses, 
the stuffing of which is falling into dust, covered with course 
sheets, badly washed, rather larger than a large napkin, benches 
for chairs, greasy dishes, pewter or iron spoons incrusted with the 
remains of the last repast of the travellers who preceded you. Oily 
lamps, dirty, inattentive, rude, course, and brutal landlords. The 
manner of preparing dishes is detestable V 

We find, in the Revue Britannique, a description of an inn in 
Portugal, the worthy sister of Spain, which deserves to be quoted 
in this place : 

" The innkeeper of Estrenoz had gone to bed when we arrived. 
Called in a rude and coarse manner by his wife, he got up and 
dressed with great celerity, rolled up his mattress and threw it into 
a corner, drew his bedstead into the middle of the room, and 
spreading over it, for a table-cloth, the sheet in which he had passed 
the night, and which had perhaps served this double purpose for 
several weeks, he invited me to take a seat at this promptly 
prepared table. I could not believe my own eyes ; I thought I must 
be dreaming ; no, I was awake, it was all real ; I replied that I 
preferred breakfasting by the fireside. The cookery of such a 
host was, as may well be supposed, abominable 4 ". 

1. Laborde, p. 174. — 2. Idem, p. 197. — 3, Idem, vol. I, p. 201. —4, Revue Britannique, 
1847, May and Juno, p. 71. 



22 



" It is in Estramadura that the traveller must arm himself with 
courage and patience. The annoyances he has experienced in 
other parts of Spain are nothing compared to those he has to endure 
in this province. The posadas in which the traveller seeks repose 
resemble for the most part bad stables; the rooms and kitchens are 
dirty, as well as the persons who inhabit them. One has often at 
one's elbow a pig, an ass, or a mule. The bedsteads are not worth 
a truss of straw. One finds nothing to eat and often nothing to 
purchase in the places where these inns are situated *: 33 

"The roads in Murcia are almost all what nature has made them; 
art has done nothing to relieve the steep ascents of the mountains 
which must be climbed at every moment ; it is often necessary to 
walk over jagged and almost impracticable rocks, which might 
afford an easy passage if care had been taken to fill up the in- 
equalities withalittle earth. In the environs of Murcia the roads are 
scarcely traced; they are not kept in repair, and are full of deep 
ruts 2 ." 

Next to the difficulties of the roads and utter want of accommo- 
dation in the inns, what first strikes our traveller is the deplorable 
state of the fields through which he passes : u The difficulty of 
conveyance is prejudicial to the progress of agriculture; some 
beautiful roads have been opened within these few years, but they 
have not rendered the Spaniards more industrious, who still adhere 
to their old customs, and use at most a few waggons. Catalonia 
and the kingdom of Valencia are almost the only provinces in which 
the use of carts has become general. The exportation of commo- 
dities is therefore rendered difficult and expensive, diminishing 
their value for the proprietor, raising their price for the purchaser, 
and thus discouraging the agriculturist 3 . " 

" In Murcia, whatever be the fertility of the soil, it produces very 
little under the care of the indolent Murci an cultivator, who shrinks 
from arduous labour. The less fertile portion of the soil is 
neglected on account of the trouble it would give, and the more 
fertile lands, producing too easily, banish from the agriculturist's 
mind the idea of bestowing more care, attention, or reflection on 
the work 4 . " 

" Plantations are extremely neglected in Arragon ; one travels 
over vast tracts of land in that province without finding a single 
tree. As to irrigation, the neglect is great : they seem desirous to 
allow nature to do all, without endeavouring to assist or extend 

i. LabOi'de, vol. Ill, p. 446. — 2. Idem, pp. 99, 100. — 3, Idem, vol. V, p. 239. — 4. Idem, 
vol. ill, p. 78, 79. 



23 



her operations. It may be observed in general that agriculture is 
greatly neglected or imperfectly understood in Arragon l : '* 

" An excellent soil extends over the surface of New Castille, but 
very little advantage is taken of the rivers that cross it. A more 
enlightened activity might multiply here the experiments which 
have succeeded elsewhere. One may here cross immense tracts' of 
land without seeing a single tree, and grounds utterly abandoned 
and uncultivated are common in this province; they however 
contain germs of vegetation and fertility that require only to be 
developed 2 . " 

Not finding any agriculture, M. Laborde seeks for industry and 
commerce; but, alas ! all he can say on the subject is that commerce 
is passive ! Let us hear him : " The present state of manufactures 
in Spain is, it must be confessed, not very brilliant, if compared 
with those of France and England. The articles manufactured here 
have none of the qualities which characterise similar articles in 
those two countries. The quantity manufactured, far from admit- 
ting of exportation to foreign countries, cannot supply the wants of 
Spain and her colonies ; prodigious quantities are imported from 
France, Germany, Holland, and England 3 ." 

f* The decay of agriculture and manufactures in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries dealt a mortal blow to trade. It wanted 
active and intelligent promoters, and suddenly fell away. Spain 
then scarcely preserved a navy ; she no longer had any ships except 
those purchased in foreign countries; she had no longer any 
merchants but such as came from other countries ; her trade became 
absolutely passive, and consequently ruinous 4 . " 

ee The rivers Ebro, Guadalquivir, Tagus, Jucar, and several others, 
formerly navigable, were subsequently neglected, and navigation on 
them became impossible 5 . " 

" The commerce of Arragon is almost entirely passive. This 
province sends its raw materials abroad, and afterwards receives 
them manufactured. It has neither cloths of any degree of fineness, 
nor fine linens, nor silks, nor gold lace, nor ribands, etc... 6 " 

" The commerce of New Castille is almost entirely passive. This 
province has none of its products fit for exportation ; it imports 
goods from the neighbouring provinces and from other parts. The 
manufacture of Toledo is not considerable; it is, as it were, only in 
its infancy. The other manufactures of New Castille are all of very 
little importance ; they can scarcely supply a portion of the popula- 

1. Laborde, VOl. I, p-. 4G3. — 2. Idem, vol. iv, pp. 300 to 303. — 3. hkm, vol. V, p. 370. — 
4. Idem, p. 877. — 5. Idem, pp. 438, 439. — 6. Idem, vol, I, p. 481, 



24 

tion of the cantons in which they are established. Exportation 
amounts to a mere nothing in this province, while its importation 
is very considerable. It however contains all that might conduce 
to its wealth. The lands require only to be cultivated with care, 
advantage being taken at the same time of the rivers that flow 
through them. The Tagus, once navigable, has long ceased to be 
so. The canal of Manzanarez, undertaken in the reign of Charles III, 
has not been finished ; it is even abandoned K " 

" Talavera was a very poor town; the silk manufactories 
established there by a Frenchman, Jean Bullier, a native of Nimes, 
ameliorated its condition. To this Frenchman is due, in some 
degree, the regeneration of the country, which he would have 
rendered more agreeable and more flourishing if he had not been 
arrested in the execution of his useful projects by obstacles which 
it is not for me to dwell upon here. The manufacture of hats, 
established also by a Frenchman, began to obtain a certain vogue. 
The manufactories of earthenware enjoyed much reputation, and 
gave rise to a branch of commerce of some importance * but they 
have considerably declined ; their work no longer preserves its 
primitive perfection. Besides the Frenchman who founded the 
silk manufactories, the manufacturers, designers, and dyers were 
also Frenchmen. Under the direction of Bullier and the Frenchmen 
who followed him the establishment rapidly increased : the most 
beautiful stuffs of France were soon imitated there. When cir- 
cumstances obliged the French to withdraw, the establishment 
immediately degenerated, the stuffs were of an inferior quality and 
of a bad taste, the demand for them slackened. The direction of 
the establishment has been confided to others ; but it is yet far from 
having regained its primitive lustre 2 . " 

" Talavera has absolutely no trade ; its situation would, however, 
be very advantageous if the Tagus were rendered navigable; the. 
town might then have a very brisk trade. The soil need only be 
assisted by industry : it would be very easy to insure and to increase 
the crops ; but the inhabitants, plunged in an apathetic indifference, 
do not rise out of the narrow sphere in which they have been 
educated, Mariana, their fellow-countryman, addressed them this 
reproach in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The lapse 
of nearly two centuries has wrought scarcely any change in their 
condition 3 . " 

" Panipeluna has only a secondary and absolutely passive trade; 



1. Laborde, VOl. IV, pp. 312 to 315. —2. hlcm, pp. 225, 226. — 3. Idem, p. 228. 



\ 



25 

it receives almost everything from without, and its manufacturing 
industry has scarcely anything with which to supply neighbouring 
towns *. " 

" The productions of Navarre are limited, and insufficient for 
the wants of its inhabitants. In general, its richest lands are not 
fully cultivated. Navarre has never had extensive manufactures, 
nor many manufactories. Its trade is absolutely passive 2 . *■ 

ee There is in Murcia no establishment on a large scale. The 
manufacture of silk is confined to a small number of looms; works 
of this sort are badly dyed and badly glazed. An establishment 
was organised by the government ; a skilful foreigner was called in 
to improve the manufacture ; but the funds were wasted, and the 
establishment broken up. The other manufactories of the country 
are unimportant 3 . " 

" Gold and silver jewelry is neglected in this country where raw 
materials are so abundant; it is all imported from abroad; hard- 
ware and ironmongery are likewise imported. The few articles 
manufactured in the country are badly executed \ " 

" Indolence and sloth/' said Sancho de Moncada, " are the pre- 
vailing vices of Spaniards, and foreigners know this so well that they 
flock from all parts to offer us the products of their industry; they 
have reduced this poor kingdom of Spain to the condition of the 
people of Israel, when they were obliged to apply to the Philistines 
for the simplest instruments of husbandry and of other manual 
labour 3 . " 

If at least the people, who will neither plough nor weave, sell 
nor buy, would allow the foreigner to plough, weave, sell and buy 
for them ! No; jealousy, and hatred of improvement cause them 
to reject the assistance offered from without. Let us hear M. de 
Laborde : " Bullier brought from France some improvements 
in manufactures; Maritz, who came likewise from France, taught 
better methods for casting cannon; Gauthier, also from France, 
introduced improvements in shipbuilding; Saint-Laurent, Patras, 
Scherer, and Vidai rendered similar services; all were persecuted, 
and some were delivered from confinement only by the interven- 
tion of high influence in their behalf 6 ." 

But what foreigners were not permitted to do among the Spa- 
niards, and for the advantage of the Spaniards, they have done as 
it were by the side of the Spaniards, and for their own advantage, 
and this has given rise to comparisons that could not fail to pre- 



1. Laborde, vol. IV, p. 292. — 2. Idem, vol. I, pp. 293 to 300. — 3. Idem, vol. Ill, p. 93. — 
4. Idem, p. 372. — 5. Idem, vol. VI, p. 430. — 6. Idem, pp. 367, 368. 



26 



sent themselves to the mind of our traveller : (s The Moors/' says 
he, cc gave the Spaniards an example of genius, industry, and acti- 
vity. These two nations had shared between them, as it were, 
the manufactures of Spain. At the time of the expulsion of the 
Moors, the manufactures which they directed suddenly declined. 
The Spaniards, having witnessed the advantages that were derived 
from them, strove to re-establish them, but never reached the 
degree to which the Moors had attained l . " 

" The Moors made a garden of Estramadura. The warmth of 
the climate and the rivers that watered the country covered it with 
the most al ttndant fertility ; but the land is in a measure abandoned 
to itself. If it yields a few productions, it is not indebted for them 
to human industry, but to its natural fecundity, which is often 
rendered abortive by the ignorance of the cultivator killing the 
seed, which, if left to itself, might have adorned its native soil. It 
is almost entirely reduced to the state of a forced pasture-land. 
Zalava contains, in the district of Badagos alone, a tract of uncul- 
tivated land, twenty-six leagues in length and twelve in breadth V 

ec Notwithstanding the advantages which the Andalusias present 
to those who are desirous of fixing their abode in them, those pro- 
vinces so rich in varied productions, so full of enchanting sites that 
claim the cultivator's care, have fallen to decay, and their decay 
evermore increases. At the time of the Moors, who made it the 
richest and most enlightened part of Europe, 1,200 villages were 
seen on the banks of the Guadalquivir ; of which not more than 
800 exist at the present day. The kingdom of Grenada, which con- 
tained 3,000,000 inhabitants, now contains only 692,92-4. There 
are, in those fertile Andalusias, districts in such a state of deso- 
lation that they resemble tracts of the centre of Africa itself. 
Thus from Utrera to Xerez, for the space of twelve leagues, not a 
hamlet is found on those fertile lands that languish uncultivated 
under a delicious climate. If we may credit the historians, Toledo 
had a population of 200,000 souls. It is certain that its manufac- 
tures alone occupied more than 100,000 persons. You meet every- 
where with vestiges of its former greatness and of its decay. 
You cannot pass through its southern part without a sigh ; heaps 
of earth, bricks, and tiles, are the melancholy remains of houses 
whose sites they cover. In the other quarters similar ruins are 
found almost at every step. This town is now reduced to a popu- 
lation of not more than 20,000 souis... It is one of the towns 



1. Laborde, Vol. V, pp. 321, 322. — 2. idem, vol. Ill, pp. 440, 441. 



27 



most repulsive in their general aspect, and the interior of which is 
the most disagreeable K " 

" Toledo has no production to export, and its manufactures are 
too limited to constitute an important branch of commerce; they 
were, however, formerly very varied and extensive. Among them 
were several excellent manufactories of swords. The manufac- 
tories of woollen stuffs were very numerous there. The silk ma- 
nufactories were not less considerable. The decline of these esta- 
blishments became more and more rapid, and by the middle of 
the last century not a vestige of them remained 2 . " 

u Seville was, for a long time, the centre of the commerce and 
the wealth of Spain. She is now only a body without a soul. 
At present no activity reigns within her walls. She has, however, 
great facilities for navigation; ships might easily ascend the Gua- 
dalquivir as far as that city. Tn the time of her prosperity, Seville 
had numerous and brilliant manufactories, she manufactured silks 
of all kinds, gold and silver textures, linen and cotton. According 
to a report presented to the king in 1659, there remained, at that 
period, only 65 looms : a great number of operatives had left the 
city for want of occupation; the population had diminished by one- 
third, and many houses were tenantless 

" Grenada was famous for her manufactures under the Moors. 
The Spaniards, following their example, established some that 
flourished until the fifteenth century; but the general causes 
which occasioned the decline of the arts in Spain produced the 
same effect at Grenada; agriculture languished, the manufacture 
of silk was neglected, the manufactories declined, and in the se- 
venteenth century ceased to exist. Efforts have been recently 
made to revive them, but with very little success; they are, down 
to the present time, in a state of mediocrity \ "■ 

" The kingdoms of Jaen and Cordova had a very brilliant trade 
while their manufactures were in activity : at present they have 
scarcely any trade left of any sort. The port of Aimeria, very 
famous under the Moors, and carrying on a considerable commerce, 
has fallen, and has not since been restored 5 . ** 

" The city of Jaen, in Andalusia, was formerly a wealthy com- 
mercial city; but its manufactures all went to decay at the close of 
the sixteenth century, and in the beginning of the seventeenth 
they were scarcely remembered. An attempt was made to revive 
them about the middle of the eighteenth century, but the new 

1. Lnhorde, vol. IV, pp. 243, 244. — 2. Idem, pp. 275, 277. — 3. Idem, vol. HI, pp. 238, 
259. — 4. Idem, p. 331. — 5, Idem, pp. 363, 364. 



28 



establishments had no vitality. Of old and new no other vestiges 
now remain than a few wretched looms V 

(( The Moors, when they had established their dominion in 
Andalusia, cultivated science and literature with success. It was 
a brilliant period for that part of Spain. Bat in their retreat they 
carried with them their scientific and literary taste, and Andalusia 
fell back into its former barbarous condition. A disposition has 
shown itself in this province to countenance study and literature, 
but the kingdoms of Cordova and Jaen have no establishment 
capable of lending its aid in such a work; they have, so to speak, 
no good classes of any kind, but at most a few bad monkish schools, 
without a sufficient number of masters, without libraries, and some- 
times without students ; thus, far from being useful, these schools 
are often prejudicial, from the loss of time they occasion to the 
pupils w r ho attend them 2 . " 

" A fter having compared the Spaniards with the Moors of past times, 
M. de Laborde compares them with the English of the present day : 
" It is impossible, " says he, cc not to do justice to the taste and magni- 
ficence of the English, on witnessing the care with which they have 
embellished the rock of Gibraltar. The have spared no pains to 
cover it with trees and flowers, to sustain the grounds by walls and 
other means of support, to open a number of roads on the bare 
stone, and to render such a soil practicable on horseback or in car- 
riages to the most elevated points. They have even sown some 
artificial meadows for their flocks; a good example to the Spa- 
niards, who might obtain with much more ease, in their fertile 
country, similar advantages 3 . " 

" The English troops attend to cleanliness and military appear- 
ance to such a degree, that it seems inconvenient and ridiculous 
to those who have served in armies less minutely particular in 
this respect. The same maybe observed of the regularity of their 
buildings, of the valuable and useful execution of all their defensive 
works; you would think yourself rather in the park and the palace 
of some monarch than in the fortress of Gibraltar : the cordons of 
the walls, the embrasures of the cannons, the groins of the vaults, 
are cut with inconceivable precision in very large blocks of very 
hard stone, and all the military instruments are constructed, each 
in its kind, with similar perfection. 

u Less neatness and order is observed at Gibraltar in the Catholic 
tombs than in the others. The Anglican graves have each its slab 

1. Laborde. vol. HI, p. 344. — 2. Idem, pp. 367 to 371. — 3, Idem, vol. V, p. 106. 



ag 



with a laconic and sententious inscription; but the Spaniards do 
not appear to have venerated these monuments with the same re- 
ligious respect l . " 

"The English have neglected nothing at Gibraltar for the 
security of the place , and they have laboured incessantly to em- 
bellish it and render it agreeable... The activity and care of the 
police preserve the best public order, and effectually provide for the 
salubrity and cleanliness of the streets. No beggars are to be met 
with there as in the Spanish towns, nor any of those dealers in 
second-hand goods, who live at the expense of the poorest classes of 
the people, nor the quacks who at all hours of the day infest in 
other places public thoroughfares 2 . " 

The Revue Britannique seeks for a term of comparison much lower. 
That journal does not compare the Spaniard with the Englishman, 
or even venture to place him on an equality with the citizen of 
any other nation of Christendom, not even with the Turk; it finds 
his fellow only among the heathens ! 

" The Spanish peasant is, in our estimation, far below the English, 
French, German, and Dutch peasant; he will not even bear compa- 
rison with the Turk, who has not been spoiled by a residence in 
Constantinople. It is undeniable that he is perhaps of all men the 
least scrupulous as to shedding the blood of his fellow-creatures. 
He is ever ready, in his anger, to strike his adversary with the 
knife. Like the ancient Carthaginian, he is cruel by instinct, and 
no less treacherous when his interest is concerned. The punica 
fides is one of the essential characteristics of the Spaniard, taken in 
the mass or individually. He may be hospitable; but he has 
nothing to offer worth the trouble of refusing. The Spaniard is a 
Christian Arab ; but, as such, he is far below the Wahabite, who 
is a little theistical, whereas the religion of the Spaniard, that self- 
styled Christianity, is nothing but a brutalising superstition, a super- 
stition as contemptible, to speak moderately, as all the forms of 
paganism that ever prevailed upon earth, with the exception, 
however, of the Egyptian paganism, to which it is indeed analagous 
in more than one respect. The Spaniard is patient in poverty and 
in the midst of privations ; he endures his fate, whatever it may 
be, with the apathetic resignation of the Hindoo. Why so? sim- 
ply because he finds it easier to suffer than to toil. In this respect, 
as in many others, the Spaniard is greatly inferior to the Indian of 
the North American prairies. The Spaniard having within his reach 

1. Laliordo, vol. v, \)\\ 108, 109 — 2 idem, p. lis, 



30 



all the means of procuring himself the positive enjoyments of life, 
and of raising his condition in the social scale, prefers living on a 
little bread and garlic, lying in a wretched hovel, and lounging 
about in rags peopled with vermin, to working like a man. If by 
chance he gets a little money into his possession, either from the 
liberality of a traveller, or from having plundered the said traveller, 
or from any other source, instead of applying this money to the 
relief of his own wants or those of his family, or to improving the 
future prospects of his children, he takes care to make no use of it, 
to apply it to no purpose whatever, but conceals in some secret 
place his unproductive treasure *. " 

But, setting aside all comparison, let us return with our author 
to a study of the Spaniards themselves. After having taken a 
survey of the country, M. deLaborde examines the men, and depicts 
their manners. We will now quote his own words, and first pre- 
sent the least harsh features of the portrait he draws : 

" They begin their work late and finish early, and while occupied 
they are still more slow than thoughtful . They devote scarcely one 
fourth of the day to toil 2 . The women too are much addicted to 
idleness; those of the higher classes are scarcely ever occupied, 
never take a. book, never attend to the lighter sort of work so useful 
in families which falls naturally to the share of the women. Many 
women of condition leave their residence on the approach of sum- 
mer, when they can easily procure salad, melons, and other fruit, 
and above all capsicums; these provisions, purchased at little cost, 
are sufficient for their sustenance; they say that it is a folly to wear 
one's self out with labour when it is so easy to obtain food without 

it When persons of both sexes are about to take a walk, they 

instantly sit down ; so great is their fear lest they should be fa- 
tigued. Nothing can rouse the Murcians from their apathy 3 . " 

" The Murcian passes his days in a state of apathy, in sloth and 
listlessness. He eats, drinks, counts his beads, and drags his cloak 
to a place where he sits down to think of nothing. A peasant, a 
porter who has to carry a light burthen, even if its weight should 
not exceed twenty-five pounds, puts it on the back of an ass, and 
refuses to carry it himself. Ignorance and sloth render the man- 
ners of the country disagreeable; prejudices are carried to a great 
extent, and the people are very litigious. A general distrust pre- 
vails : they fear and avoid one another, every one lives alone, far 
from his own kindred, without friends or neighbours; such seclusion 



1. Bevu$ Britannique, I846j May and June, pp. U9, 150. — 2. Laborde, vol. in, pp. 110, 111. 

— 3. Idem, p. 113. 



31 



leads to sullen, unsociable habits. Discord arises in families, and 
society takes a tinge of that savageness with which the Murcians 
reproached the Moors, their predecessors. Cardinal de Belltiga 
said of them : The sky and the soil of the country are good, all 
between is bad... Some years since, the city was furnished with 
lamps ; this novelty displeased the people to such a degree that on 
the very first night all the lamps were broken with stones \ " 

" The Murcian is sad, gloomy, passionate, hypochondriac. His 
inaction and bad diet may be partly the cause of this. He is per- 
suaded that chronic diseases should be respected, and that it is 
dangerous to attempt to cure them. Physicians refuse to treat 
them 2 . '■' 

" In Murcia, every one lives secluded; hence the manners have 
contracted something wild and awkward. The members of one 
family scarcely ever unite. The presence of strangers seems to 
discompose them, and they endeavour to avoid it. The aspect of 
the people is gloomy; this province is often the theatre of sangui- 
nary contests. To his extreme indolence the Murcian joins the 
most deplorable superstition. A peasant, suspected of being a spy, 
and threatened with being shot, replied : i I defy you to kill me, 
I have about me an image of Christ that has touched the holy cross 
of Carovaca. > The poor devil was spared, and doubtless attributed 

his deliverance to his amulet It is scarcely conceivable that 

manners should have become so rude, so repulsive, under so beau- 
tiful a sky and on so happy a soil ; they were milder among the 
Moors whom the Murcians stigmatise with the appellation of bar- 
barians, although, in inheriting their possessions, they have not 
continued their industry, their activity, or their civilization. The 
inhabitants of Carthagena are of very different manners; but it is 
necessary to add that few of them are Murcians, the greater portion 
being foreigners 3 . " 

" Andalusia is the country of those braggarts who differ from 
other men by their loud and menacing tones, but who threaten 
only when they are feared, and grow mild as soon as they cease to 
inspire terror, always to be feared when they can strike without any 
danger to themselves, known by the name of Majos. There are 
likewise Majas in the country, women as bewitching as the Majos 
are repulsive. A free and easy air, a nimble step, are the attributes 
of these dangerous women; practised in the art of seducing, they 
know every method of obtaining success. Free in their language, 

1. LalXH'de, vol. Ill, pp. 46, 47. ~ 2. Idem, p. 49. — 3. idem, pp. 113 to Ho. 



still more so in their altitudes, they provoke, they attack, they invite; 
it is difficult to resist them. Andalusia was the refuge of the Gi- 
tanos, men without house or home, outlaws, the vermin of Spain, 
the opprobrium of the nation who tolerated them, the terror of the 
highways and the fields. Protected by the nobility, the Gitatfos 
protected the nobility in their turn. The nobility afforded them 
places of concealment to screen them and their robberies from jus- 
tice. They therefore respected the lands, persons, servants, and 
farmers of the nobility, were acquainted with their feuds, and 
furnished them with satellites by whose agency they might wreak 
their revenge l . " 

" The artisan of Valencia is fond of pleasure and good living. 
The lowest ranks of the people would have the same tastes if they 
possessed the means of gratifying them. The latter have the ap- 
pearance of being mild, but they are said to conceal their hatred; 
they were formerly accused of being familiar with the use of the 
dagger, and of handling it with skill. Valencia was even reputed 
to have many hired assassins. It makes one shudder in walking 
through the streets of this town to find crosses on the walls with 
inscriptions recalling the names of the persons assassinated below... 
As soon as the women no longer feel the necessity of working, they 
give themselves up to idleness until want obliges them to work 
again. Those of the higher classes do no work of any kind, they 
do not even read : this indolence is the fault of the parents, who 
accustom them to inactivity. The women have a singular predilec- 
tion for the ' place ' of Saint Catherine, which is a place of resort 
for men ; the former scarcely ever leave their houses without passing 
through the place however circuitous the road it may oblige them 
to take. A man who remained a whole day on that square would 
see three-fourths of the ladies of Valencia pass before him , gene- 
rally two or three times. Spain abounds in paupers and vagrants; 
the former multiply from the facility with which they live on alms; 
the latter are frequently persons who have escaped from the Pre- 
sides, and more frequently still unfortunate peasants driven from 
their homes by misery and the impossibility of finding employment. 
Both live in destitution and soon perish 2 . " 

The quarrels of the Valencian are always followed by bloodshed, 
and very little suffices to provoke them : the pleasure of revenge 
has for him an irresistible charm ; and the gun, the dagger, the 
knife, and even instruments of husbandry, are the weapons that 



1. Laborde, vol. Ill, pp. 385, 386. — 2. Idem, vol.V, p. 139. 



38 

he uses to gratify this passion. He lights with the rage of a bar- 
barian. This kingdom has long been known to abound in hired 
assassins, who, for a moderate sum, undertake to wreak the ven- 
geance of others. Murders are still very frequent there, the pri- 
sons therefore are always full, and the twelve existing in Valencia 
are insufficient. 

ee The number of idle and dangerous men who fill the convents 
might, be usefully employed on the canals, roads, and in the ports. 
Without reckoning that a quarter of the population of Spain is com- 
posed of men living in absolute sloth , the country contains 
100,000 inhabitants who may be divided between smugglers, 
robbers, mule-shearers, freebooters, and those convicted of murder 
who have escaped from prison or from the Presides ; 40,000 custom- 
house officers, whose duty it is to arrest them, but who in reality are 
leagued with them ; 60,000 students, the greater number of whom 
beg alms in the evening on pretence of buying books. Add to all 
these 100,000 beggars fed by 60,000 monks at the doors of the 
convents, and you will reckon in Spain nearly 600,000 individuals 
whose hands are useless either for the cultivation of the ground or 
for mechanical arts, and whose existence is often dangerous to 
society l . " 

We shall not be astonished to find profound ignorance prevailing 
among such a people ; but we are determined not to proceed upon 
supposition, and will again quote the words of our traveller : i( The 
decline of the arts was the same in New Castille as in other parts 
of Spain . They were destroyed under Philip the Fourth and Charles 
the Second, Skilful architects, ingenious sculptors, and famous 
painters had disappeared, and when Philip the Fifth ascended the 
throne scarcely a faint recollection was preserved of them. This 
prince founded an Academy at Madrid, which was also patronised 
]}y his successors, but it is in vain to seek there any longer for 
valuable instruction. The Academy has ceased to distribute prizes, 
and its existence is a mere derision. Except in Madrid, the arts 
find very few amateurs, and are not cultivated in the least; there 
is no establishment calculated to inspire a taste for them, or to 
facilitate their study ; few persons even are to be found capable of 
appreciating them; and in general they are treated very lightly. 
New Castille has three sham Universities : one at Toledo, another 
at Alcala, and a third at Siguenza. In these much time is wasted 
in the pursuit of useless knowledge... The private schools have 



I. Laborde, vol. i, Introduction, pp. 18, 19. 
T. II. 



3 



34 



the same vices as the Universities , and the same may be affirmed 
of the colleges... Here an important reflection presents itself, 
unpl easing, perhaps, but too true. The presence of the Court 
ought to give life to New Castille, and the benefits of the Sovereign 
ought to extend over the provinces which surround his residence. 
By what fatality does the contrary exist in this province *f " 

" The University of Cervera, in Catalonia, is not equal to the 
conception which we ought to form of it. It wants many establish- 
ments requisite for the formation of good pupils. It possesses 
neither an amphitheatre for anatomy, nor a botanical garden, nor 
a laboratory for chemistry and pharmacy, nor apparatus for the 
study of natural philosophy, nor a course of clinical medicine, and 
the result is that neither anatomy, nor surgical operations, nor 
botany, nor chemistry, nor pharmacy, nor demonstrative materia 
medica, are taught there. Professors of medicine still follow the 
Gelenic system ; they have mixed it up with that of Boerhaave, 
and one disfigures the other. Philosophy is a mixture of the 
peripatetic school and the precepts of Jacquier, and the result is alto- 
gether unintelligible. The professors of theology content themselves 
with scholastic morality, and do not go so far as the dogmatic V 

"The Universities want apparatus, and possess few instruments, 
no laboratory, no observatory, and their scanty funds leave no hope 
of their soon obtaining any. The professors are very restricted in 
the choice of books to be used for their lessons ; they are not allowed 
to adopt those which might contain a clearer and more certain 
doctrine, or new views and discoveries : for instance, they have 
obliged the professor of chemistry to follow Baume for chemistry 
applied to the arts, and Macquer for chemistry applied to medicine. 
Science has been greatly enriched with modern discoveries and 
beautiful experiments, which the Spanish professors are not at 
liberty to communicate 3 . 

" La Mancha is by no means advanced in the cultivation of 
science and art. Some very indifferent schools of scholastic theology 
and peripatetic philosophy, and some small grammar-schools, 
are the only sources whence the people can derive instruction ; 
there is no school for the arts, no establishment calculated to polish 
and adorn the mind, or to promote industry 

" Estramadura is the most neglected province in all Spain, and 
the most backward in the sciences and arts. It may, in this 
respect, be placed on a level with La Mancha; it has no school or 

1. Laborde, vol. IV, pp. 317 to 334. — 2. Mem, t, it, pp. 99, 100, — 3. Idem, pp. 442, 443. 

— U. Idem, vol. IV, p. 30. 



35 

establishment for instruction of airy kind. Us i^ia^jtanfs live in 
ignorance of what is passing around them in the world of science 
and art. They have always neglected and contemned study. They 
know neither how to enjoy the conveniences of life, nor how to 
procure them. Unaccustomed to socio ty, they fear the approach of 
strangers, and avoid their company. A certain aversion for em- 
ployment of all kinds, and the want of instruction, disinclines them 
to labour, and keeps them in perpetual indolence 1 ." 

" Old Castille has no establishment favourable to the progress of 
science. It has, indeed, a few colleges for the education of youth; 
but nothing is taught in them beyond the elements of the Latin 
language 2 . " 

" The sciences and arts do not flourish in Arragon ; the inhabitants 
neglect these two important pursuits; they have not enjoyed that 
tranquillity so necessary to success in either, nor have they possessed 
any establishment where the elements of either are taught, or been 
provided with the means of adding to their knowledge 3 . " 

And what pupils are formed by these schools? We shall hear. 
Let us begin by the physicians : " The pupils write their lessons 
from the master's dictation; their note-books are a shapeless, confus- 
ed mass of matter, unintelligible even to those who have written 
it ; they omit the words which they do not understand, and many 
others which they can neither understand, hear, nor write. Yet 
these note-books are their sole resource ; very few of them can 
procure any books. The pupils may study or not, as they are 
inclined ; their proficiency is not ascertained by means of examina- 
tions; they are obliged to provide for their sustenance, and indi- 
gence damps their ardour and weakens their courage . Examinations 
are very trifling in Spain, even those which are instituted for the 
purpose of filling vacant chairs; the questions for examination are 
very superficial; the most ignorant students may aspire to the 
doctorship... If questions are put on anatomy, the candidate 
answers like a parrot what he has conned by rote from books, though 
he has a very imperfect knowledge of it, never having seen it on 

dead bodies Many students obtain admission into private 

families, where they perform the most servile functions, are 
confounded with the servants, take their meals with them, and do 
the vilest offices \ " 

h e Some surgeons, unknown barbers of old, were appointed 
professors; to these were added, for form's sake, a few physicians 

1. Laborde, VOl. IN, pp. 450, 451. — 2. Idem, vol. I, p. 393. — 3. Idem, p. .190. ^—4. Idem, 
vol. VI, pp. 195, 223. 



36 



without knowledge, skill, or experience, but no students came to 
attend their lectures; those who remained, finding themselves 
mixed with a number of barber's assistants, grew ashamed of such 
company, and withdrew. All the supernumeraries, who had never 
studied medicine, had their degrees conferred on them in one day, 
all together, without preparation, without examination, formalities 
of any kind, or expense. Spain was inundated by this multitude of 
new quack-doctors, who affected a pride proportionate to their 
ignorance. The public became their victim, and numbers were 
mown down by these fatal measures. Notwithstanding their ill- 
success, the new physicians had the assurance to solicit military 
grades; they wished to be made captains, colonels, and lieutenant- 
colonels. This act of madness hastened their ruin *. " 

Now a word or two on the Spanish historians : 

" Most of them have a diffuse, obscure, low or declamatory style, 
or trivial, always prolix, bombastic, insupportable. Their writings 
are full of fables, doubtful facts, ridiculous suppositions, inconclusive 
arguments, digressions, useless matter, allegories, and hyperboles; 
they will rarely bear reading 2 . " 

" The learning of the Spaniards is in general confused, badly 
digested, mixed with prejudices, propped up with a mass of ideas, 
passages, reminiscences jumbled together, without any choice or 
discrimination, order or method ; it is a learning which cannot 
even be complete in its kind, because it is behind all that is written 
in other countries on the same subjects, owing to the difficulty of 
communication, and the impossibility of procuring foreign books 3 . " 

" The oratorical art is that in which the Spaniards seem to have 
had the least success. The eloquence of the bar is unknown among 
them. In the fifteenth century, the pulpit produced only cold 
declamation, insipid allegories, exaggerated metaphors, trivial jests, 
misplaced sallies, ridiculous allusions V 

" By what fatality has the Spanish drama, after having been the 
first in Europe, after having served as a model to all others, fallen 
so low as to be treated with indifference and contempt by other na- 
tions ? We find in the Spanish heroic comedies, for the most part, 
a monstrous assemblage of plots badly accumulated, ill-connected, 
ill-combined, full of strange and incredible adventures, in which 
princes and princesses fall as it were from the sky; the plot is often 
unconnected, the action is interrupted every moment, the audience 
is suddenly supposed to be transported to a distance of three 

1. Laborde, vol. VI, pp. 236, 237. ~ 2. Idem, pp. 247, 248. — 3. Idem, p. 193. — 4. Idem, 
vol. VI, p. 252. 



hundred leagues. The. most critical and interesting situations arc 
often spoiled by dull pleasantries. The dignity of tragedy is 
degraded hy low buffoonery i . " 

" In the sacred comedies, God, the angels, the saints, the devils, 
the virtues, and the vices personified are all confounded with each 
other, to the great scandal of religion and morals. The devil is 
ordinarily represented in them in a black dress, with stockings, 
ruffles, a collar, a tail, and ribbands all red... In these comedies 
are to be seen the wildest freaks of the imagination. . . Heaven and 
Hell, the Garden of Eden, souls burning in purgatory, the Conclave, 
the election of popes, the Holy Sacrament, the devil disguised in the 
habit of a gray friar These plays were pleasing to the multi- 
tude ; but they offended reason, good sense, morals, and religion 2 . " 

cc During the past century most nations have laboured suc- 
cessfully to reform their theatre ; the Spaniards are almost the only 
people that have made no progress in this branch of literature; they 
are in the same state they were in at the beginning and in the 

middle of the seventeenth century The general decline of 

Spain in almost all possible branches of art and science, under the 
last kings of the house of Austria, may have contributed to this. By 
what fatality is the Spanish theatre neglected at the present day in 
an age when taste is refined, and dramatic art is carried to a degree 
of perfection which it never before attained? The Spaniards, 
attached to their ancient customs, disdain to profit by the progress 
of other nations ; they stagnate in a listless and barbarous apathy. 
The performance of their actors is still more imperfect than their 
drama; they have no majesty, no softness of expression, either in 
voice or gesture; all is forced, violent, or lifeless ; all is in contra- 
diction to the laws of Nature. Shouts constitute the most import- 
ant part of their acting; if they threaten, they roar; if they 
command, they thunder ; if they sigh, it is with a painful effort, in 
which their convulsed respiration is almost exhausted. Their 
action is mostly monotonous, singular, and ignoble. The women, 
in their bursts of passion, become furies, warriors become ruffians, 
generals brigands, and heroes hectors ; nothing is pathetic with 
them 3 . " 

When we see such things, we are tempted to ask if there are in 
such a society any principles, any government, any forms of j ustice ? 
Yes, all this is to be found in the country ; but what justice ! " The 
exceptional tribunals, " says M. de Laborde, are too frequent in 



1. Laboi'de, vol. VI, pp. 321, 322. —2. Idem, pp. 323 10 326. — 3. Idem, pp. 336 to 344. 



Spain. They withdraw a number of individuals from the sur- 
veillance of the local magistrates. The jurisdictions, likewise too 
numerous, combat and weaken each other. Lawsuits, dragged 
from court to court, are interminable; often stretching beyond two 
or three generations. The rich suitor tires out and ruins his 
poorer antagonist. During the slow progress of criminal trials the 
proofs die away, the guilty often escape punishment, and the 
innocent are often punished, by a long confinement, for not being 
guilty. The prisoners have every facility for communicating with 
persons outside; they haug baskets without the bars of their 
prison to solicit alms of passers-by, and afterwards drawing them 
back with what has been put into them, they thus have an oppor- 
tunity of receiving letters, and advice or information for their 
defence or escape *. " 

What a government ! " The labourer, the landlord, the farmer 
can neither sell nor exchange any of the produce of their lands, 
their flocks, their farm-yard, or their studs ; the sportsman cannot 
dispose of his game, the manufacturer of his wares, or the tradesman 
of the goods in his shop, without each time paying a duty. A 
private man canuot sell his horse, his ass, or his pig, without 
conforming to the same regulation. No one is permitted to kill a 
calf, a sheep, or a lamb of his own flock without having declared 
his intention to do so. Such articles as tallow, grapes, and oil are 
taxed two or three times as they change their form. These taxes 
are one of the greatest obstacles to agriculture and industry. They 
weigh principally on the people, who, being obliged to purchase by 
retail, thus pay accumulated duty. This leads moreover to inspec- 
tions and searches, which become vexatious from the faithlessness 
and avidity of the subalterns, who are with difficulty kept within 
bounds, since they are certain of impunity 2 . " 

"The Cruzada is a tax levied by the popes with a view to a vvar 
with the Moors. The bulls which grant indulgences to those who 
took part in the war are still sold for the advantage of the king, and 
no one can dispense with buying them every year, without being 
reputed a bad catholic 3 . 

" If Spain were to become entirely bankrupt, the expenditure of 
the State would still exceed its revenues by 400,000,000 reals. I 
doubt whether it be possible for the finances of any country to be in 
a more deplorable condition. France is indebted to her insti- 
tutions, her intelligence, her love of labour and property, for 

1. Labortle, vol. VI,'pp. 83, 86. — 2. Idem, vol. V, pp. 16i to i66. — 3. idem, p. 168. 



39 



her financial prosperity. Far from arriving at such brilliant 
results, unhappy Spain, overwhelmed with the hurden of her 
ancient institutions, drags on a miserable existence under a go- 
vernment destitute of all means of carrying on its administration, 
without credit abroad or at home, equally incapable of rewarding 
the devotedness of its servants, and of curbing the audacity of its 
enemies, and forced at length to implore the assistance of foreign 
power, in order to obtain from its own people a few compulsory 
loans, a few wretched taxes, which the hardness of the times ren- 
ders it impossible for them to pay. Such is now the position of this 
country, and such it will continue, if the old system, which seems 
to be revived, be persevered in *. " 

Finally, what religious principles do we find in Spain! " The 
Valencian population is one of the most superstitious of the whole 
country. They mix up religious duties with the most profane cus- 
toms, and hope, by external practices that have nothing in common 
with the worship due to the Almighty, to obtain forgiveness for 
their sins. In the saints especially they place great confidence, 
attributing to them the power of preserving from accidents and 
disease : Saint Roch preserves from the plague, Saint Anthony 
from fire, Saint Barbara from lightning, Saint Casalida cures hemor- 
rhage, Saint Appolina the tooth-ache, Saint Angustin the dropsy, 
Saint Raymond watches over pregnant women, Saint Lazarus takes 
care of women during their confinement , and Saint Nicholas of 
marriageable girls. Every carter carries about him the image of 
a saint, to whom he testifies his gratitude as long as his journey is 
prosperous; but, if any accident happens to him on the road, he 
treads his protector under foot, overwhelms him with abuse, and 
sends Saint Barbara or Saint Francis to the devil, our Lady of the 
Carmelites to the infernal regions 2 . " 

u Romerias are short journeys to chapels, performed on the day 
preceding that consecrated to the saint. The pilgrims pass the night 
in the chapel : men and animals are huddled together in tents; the 
two sexes are mingled; they are riotous with laughter and singing, 
they lie down to rest, and the darkness of the night is a cloak to 
licentiousness, and to excesses ill-suited to the sanctity of the day 
which they have met to solemnise 3 . The mixture of profan e things, 
and accessories that have nothiug to do with religious worship, 
throw more ridicule here than elsewhere on these processions, of 
which the inhabitants are extremely fond 4 . The processions of 

i. Laborde, vol. v, pp. 208, 209. — 2. Mem, vol. it, pp. 305, and following. — 3. idem, 
vol. Yl, pp. 448, 449, — 4. Idem, vol. II, p. 450, 451. 



40 

Passion Week, not more than twenty years ago, were attended by 
flagellants, by penitents attached to cross bars of iron, by giants 
covered with cuirasses and helmets, and by other ridiculous per- 
sonages. Those who formed the processions walked two by two, 
with a long interval between each pair in order to leave room for 
the sweep of a train five feet long *. On the night of Good Friday a 
splendid dinner is given to the sick. Individuals of all classes 
crowd into the hospitals, and jostle one another in their efforts to 
seize upon dishes in order to present them to the patients. Con- 
vinced that they are doing a good action, and desirous to render it 
still more meritorious, they force the poor patients to gorge them- 
selves with the viands, striving who shall make them devour most, 
in the name of the Virgin and the saints 2 . " 

" In the town of Valencia no procession of any importance takes 
place which is not preceded by eight statues of giants of prodigious 
bulk. The heads of these giants are of pasteboard, of an enor- 
mous size , frizzed and dressed according to the fashion of the day ; 
the bodies are wooden frames, covered with coats or robes, and 
decked with various ornaments ; they are borne by men dressed in 
flowing garments reaching to the ground, who make them dance, 
leap, turn, and spin in every possible manner. The attention of 
the crowd is directed more to the motions of the giants than to the 
religious ceremony which follows. To perpetuate these giants 
there exists at Valencia a rather considerable endowment for their 
support. They have a house belonging to them, in which they are 
deposited, and two livings have been created in honour of them. 
The clergymen who hold these livings are bound to take care of 
the giants and of their dresses 3 . A ridiculous procession takes 
place on Good Friday : in this procession are penitents wrapped in 
red cloth sacks, with their heads encased in conical hoods like sugar 
loaves. The procession is headed by two trumpeters, whose instru- 
ments bray with a monotonous and discordant tone ; the children 
who form part of the procession wear wigs that fall over their 
faces, and crowns of thorns on their heads. Borne on a litter ap- 
pears the Eternal, arrayed in albe, and stole, and scarf. In one of 
these processions are to be seen a Christ so naked as to be offensive, 
lying on a red bed; tambourines covered with black and flageolets 
adorned with the same colour; idiots or half-idiots dressed in loose 

1. Laborde, vol. n, pp. 65, 66. — 2. idem, p. 310. — 3. With reference lo endowments, 
we will here quote an instance of one which appeared to us so extraordinary that we did 
not venture to insert it in our text. It is the following : " In a cloister adjacent to a 
church, geese are bred and taken care of! An annuity is provided for their maintenance, " 
Laltorde, p. 45. 



41 

party-coloured clothes, yellow and bine, with handkerchiefs tied 
round their necks and stairs in their hands; a garden of Olives sur- 
rounded with an osier fence, and other things no less ridiculous. 
On the day of Corpus-Christi, they imitate the massacre of the Inno- 
cents. A man dressed in woman's clothes, mounted on an ass, 
represents the Virgin Mary. He carries in his arms a child, who 
personates the infant Jesus; a man leads the ass by a halter, an ox 
and a horse follow them. Men in a Jewish costume run through 
the streets as if they were mad, armed with knives, cutlasses, and 
swords, seemingly bent on murdering all the children; they seize 
upon all those whom they meet, and apply their knives to the poor 
creatures' throats. At the feast of Saint Joseph are seen a Bacchus 
astride upon a tub, a family assembled to kill a pig, a Spaniard 
and a Spanish woman dancing the bolero, and a giant, in a Dutch 
garb, making bears dance to the sound of a drum beaten by another 
figure. At nightfall, the representation is reduced to ashes : this 
is called the follas of Saint Joseph. 

" This is the most critical moment : the night favours licentious- 
ness and intrigues ; pickpockets now ply their trade in security ; 
lovers come to their appointed meetings, seek and find one 
another, the night is generally fruitful in events... Tt is su- 
perfluous to draw a picture of the improprieties which are 
committed in the church of Valencia on the occasion of the 
representation of the baptism of Saint Vincent Ferrier . To celebrate 
a miracle of this saint, they bring him into a house where 
there are two dead children; Saint Vincent, affected by the grief of 
the parents, approaches the table and blesses the saucepan ; at the 
same instant the two children, restored to life, rise out of it, and 
gambol, frisk, and dance on the table, and hang about the necks 
of their father, and mother, of the monks, and of the servant, and 
overwhelm them with kisses and endearments. The dominican, 
impatient to receive the pie which the servant is holding, blesses 
it, and a pigeon which it contained, although thoroughly baked, 
comes to life at once, spreads its wings, and disappears in the air... 
In another procession those who carry the banners of the different 
trades play a thousand antics, and perform feats of strength with 
them, and poise them with dexterity; but now and then a banner 
slips from their hands, and in its fall bruises the unwary heads of 
the gaping crowd ; at the same time the noise of the tambourines, 
mixed with all kinds of shrill and discordant cries, makes a hubbub 
the confusion of which excites laughter in the beginning, but soon 
fatigues. Next come the dwarfs that accompany the giants ; these 



42 

have pasteboard heads, which are monstrous from their prodigious 
size and extraordinary shape ; they are dressed after a grotesque 
fashion j they play castanets and dance as they move along. The 
regular clergy, the secular clergy, the chapter of the cathedral, and 
the corporation of the city close the procession... It is difficult to 
give an account of all that takes place at these feasts ; people run 
from altar to altar to see and to be seen J the streets leading to the 
altars are filled with persons of either sex; they seek and find one 
another, and meet; the confusion prevents discovery, and the 
stupid attention paid to the representation allows many private 
interviews to pass unperceived amid the innumerable multitude. 
Night comes on, and the crowd increases. The men's slouched hats 
and the women's mantillas facilitate numerous intrigues, over which 
the night draws its curtain. The mother often seeks in vain for 
her daughter, and the husband for his wife. The darkness of the 
night hides the sequel to all this disorder. There is little fear of 
discovery; on all sides are individuals engaged in the same pursuits, 
and all are reciprocally indulgent *\ " 

" On the morning of Easter Sunday they build up m the public 
square a gigantic statue representing Judas, and on the passing of 
the procession this statue is set on fire. The people are more 
attentive to this spectacle than to the religious ceremony before 
them ; they celebrate it by bursts of laughter, by intemperate shouts^ 
hootings, and exclamations not unfrequently obscene. Another 
custom, perhaps still more to be condemned, is observed there i 
during the week preceding Christmas, high mass is solemnised at 
the Grey Friars'. Children crowd to the place with whistles, and as 
soon as mass begins the loud and shrill tones of the whistles are 
echoed back by the vaulted roof of the church, and mingle with the 
chant of the priests. This scandalous noise is renewed at the ele- 
vation of the host, at the communion, and at the termination of 
mass... The Mondas are a famous feast, in which a number of 
offerings, varying with the age and devotioil of the bearers, are 
presented to the holy Virgin. Among these offerings are sometimes 
seen animals adorned in a thousand different ways ; lambs, sheep, 
horses, asses, pigs, etc., are offered to the saint. All these processions 
enter the chapel, and with them the barrows and carts in which 
offerings are conveyed ; the animals are led to the very foot of the 
altar. Frequent disputes arise. The meeting of two processions 
occasions a struggle for precedence, in which angry words are 



1. Laborde, vol. n, pp. 316 to 332. 



IS 



sometimes followed by blows. The processions are often mixed 
and confounded with one another; battles are fought with the fist 
or with clubs, or stones, and bloodshed often ensues 1 ." 

Such is Modern Spain ; such is Spain, once the first, now the last 
of European nations ! Spain, deprived of America, ruined within 
her own territory, without trade, without industry, without food, 
and possessing a fertile soil ! Let a more skilful pen, that of M. de 
Lamennais, sum up what is contained in the preceding pages. It 
is not the socialist of 1848 who speaks, but the abbe of J 830, just 
returned from his pilgrimage to Rome. The following picture is 
taken from his Affaires de Rome 

After ages bright with every kind of glory, Spain has fallen by 
degrees into so profound a lethargy that she can be compared in this 
respect to ho other country. Far behind the nations at the head 
of which she formerly moved, she is now a mere cypher in science, 
literature, and art; in everything except courage, devotedness, and 
energy of character. All that has been accomplished for two 
hundred years in the scientific and intellectual world is as if it had 
never been for this nation, whose fertile and original genius might 
have contributed so powerfully to the progress of the human miiid 
and of general civilisation. Instead of this, the apathy, the ignor- 
ance of Spain find not their equal in all Europe, instruction iii 
Spain is now what it was three generations after Charles the Fifth. 
There has been no change, no advancement; all, on the contrary, 
has declined from day to day. Intellect, which, to prosper, requires 
constant activity, has here sunk into a heavy slumber. Both the 
clergy and the laity are still no farther advanced than the fifteenth 
century. They remain motionless, with their antiquated methods 
and ideas, and Aristotle still reigns over the descendants of the 
Cantabrians and the Visigoths. Besides this, they have no resources 
for study, no schools to form new artists -. " 

The history of the decline of Spain would be equally mourn- 
ful and instructive. It would exhibit to us the grandees, deprived 
of political influence, shrunk into mere court-puppets, hereditary 
worshippers of the idol that sits, for the time being, on the throne, 
degenerating in the midst of sloth and libertinism. We should 
see the last scions of their race, which has undergone physical as 
well as moral degradation, left, on the land over which their an- 
cestors shed such renown, mere shapeless phantoms ; a ridiculous 
mockery of mankind. Then we should witness the long series of 

1, Laborde, vol. iv, pp. 231 to 233, — % Lamennais, pp. 232 to 234. 



44 

internal diseases , the grangrene of the social body, which are 
generated when power, concentrated in the hands of one man, 
without control or any rule of action but his own caprice, is by 
turns wielded by a favourite, a mistress, a lackey, a dry-rubber. 
Thi's Caesar claims a right to dispose of your property, your persons, 
your lives, all, without exception. But agriculture languishes, 
fields iLe. fallow, industry declines, commerce perishes, the revenue, 
dila*p£kted by the courtiers, is encumbered with, debts, public 
bankruptcies succeed each other as regularly as the seasons, the 
' army is disorganised, ships rot in the ports, every department of 
the public service falls into neglect, and the roads are infested with 
robbers who negociate with the government as one power nego- 
ciates with another. The police, unable to protect the citizen, can 
employ their activity only to disturb the pleasures of the domestic 
hearth; justice, servile and mercenary, is now the blind instru- 
ment of the prince's revenge, and now the privilege of the power- 
ful and the rich, and a warrant of impunity for their crimes. 
But the country is depopulated, misery increases from year to 
year, the descendants of the men who fought under the Gonzalvos 
and the Gortez stretch forth their hands in the streets and public 
squares to beg a maravedi from the compassion of the stranger; 
naked men wander on a naked soil. But the very souls of men 
are here condemned to inhabit a vast desert; only a shadow sur- 
vives of the old universities, the schools are contemptible; igno- 
rance, proclaimed the prop of the throne, spreads her pall over the 
national genius. There is gloom everywhere, and thick night; 
and if in that night a solitary lamp is seen to glimmer in some 
remote dwelling, that dwelling immediately becomes an object of 
suspicion, and he whose sight, weary of the darkness, seeks for the 
sweet light of knowledge, finds, in its stead, only the red and 
smoky torch of persecution. But ail discussion relative to power, 
its acts, or the public weal, is forbidden, and petition for reform is 
looked upon as a rebellion. No books, journals, or correspondence, 
except on private matters, are allowed to cross the frontier. But 
the whole people are kept in close confinement, thought itself is 
proscribed; what matters it? this is the sovereign's right, the safe- 
guard of his power 1 ." 

The contrast that we wish to exhibit between the sixteenth and 
the nineteenth centuries in Spain is so true, so very striking, that 
a writer has painted it in such lively colours we might believe that 



i. Affairs of Home, Lameiinuis, pp. 237 to 239. 



his picture was intended to serve as a demonstration of our own 
thesis : " Spain is a dispossessed queen; for two hundred years 
and more, diamonds have been falling from her glittering crown. 
The source of her wealth, well or ill-gotten, is exhausted for etg^ - 
Her treasures are lost, her colonies are gone, she is deprived 6#th& : 
prestige of that external opulence which veiled, oratlea^t d6s€nS r 
bled, her real and utter poverty. The nation is exhaust del sueli 
a degree, and has been so long unhappy, that each individual. feels 
but his own misery. His country has ceased to exist for him; ^en 
those times are gone when the guerillas called the citizen to arms" 
for the sole and generous purpose of vindicating the national 
honour. The despondency and apathy of the nation are visible even 
in the battles fought by the Spaniards among themselves in their 
civil dissensions. They fight from habit, and discharge their 
muskets at their countrymen because they can do nothing else, and 
because every shot from their guns may bring them a piece of 
bread. A nation reduced to such a state is low indeed : the chill 
ness of death is very near seizing upon its extremities... What 
a length of time it will require to heal the wounds of these popula- 
tions, so brave and so devoted ! How much gold, how much blood 
have been lavished during the past seven years without an object, 
without any conceived plan. What would Charles the Fifth say, if, 
rising out of his grave, he saw his great and glorious Spain strug- 
gling thus miserably in dread uncertainty of her future destinies? 
Where are my colonies? where are my Batavian provinces? where 
is my gigantic power, and the glory of Spain, which resounded 
from one hemisphere to the other? What have you done with my 
inheritance, ye cowardly and unskilful men? where are my treasures, 
where the victorious fleets that crossed the Ocean to bring back in 
profusion to my empire the gold and gems of the New World 1 ! " 

But let us pause. Our readers must be fatigued with gazing so 
Jong on so sad a spectacle. The question must, we think, at this 
moment arise in their minds : what can be the cause of so many 
evils? of such utter misery, such extreme ignorance, such disgust- 
ing sloth? «. 

— Tyranny, replies the politician. 

— Catholicism, says the Protestant. 

— The Inquisition, adds the historian. 

But these three replies form but one ; they are the three sides of 
a prism, which, united, give the entire ray of truth. In truth, Ca- 



1. Tardif, pp. 103 to 109. 



tholicism is {he lather; the Inquisition and Tyranny the daughters. 
We are not the first to make this affirmation ; we only repeat what 
we have read in the lines we are now going to submit to the perusal 
of our readers. It is sufficient for us to have pointed out the 
connexion of the different causes which will be assigned by our 
authorities. 

That Catholicism produced the Inquisition, a tribunal of priests, 
judging heretics, it appears to us superfluous to demonstrate : the 
very nature of the institution renders it evident. It is however 
expedient to show that one was a necessary consequence of the other; 
that the ruling idea of Catholicism, the principle of authority, 
contained the germ of the Inquisition. '-' It was impossible that 
the Romish Church should not extend its principle to its penal 
code; it does not doubt in matters of faith, neither does it doubt 
in criminal matters. This is the reason why, in the Church, the 
accused and the guilty have but one and the same appellation. 
Whoever is arraigned at her tribunal has Heaven and Earth against 
him ; the interrogatory is already a species of torture. 

(i When the Church accuses, she seems already convinced; all 
her efforts tend to extort the confession of the crime, which, in 
virtue of her infallibility, she discovers in darkness ; from this 
anticipated conviction of the guilt of the accused are produced all 
those ambushes and snares laid for the purpose of obtaining by 
surprise the confession of the accused. The names of the witnesses 
are concealed or falsified. Everywhere, in the most trifling 
details, it is strikingly evident that truth is on one side, and the 
demon on the other \. " 

In the second place, that Catholicism has produced the Spanish 
absolutism of the Catholic Kings, is sufficiently shown by the very 
name given to these kings ; but let us rather consult facts : 
c f Another no less deplorable consequence of the position of the 
clergy in Spain and Portugal is that they have no sooner confound- 
ed the cause of religion with that of despotism, than this error, 
producing its consequences, leads to a monstrous abuse of the word 
of God. Political fury has invaded the pulpit, and stained it with 
abject and sacrilegious adulation... The lips whose mission is to 
preach peace, charity, and mutual love, have spoken the language 
of hatred and vengeance; horrible vows, abominable threats, have 
more than once been heard, in the presence of the tabernacles in 
which abides the Son of Man, who sacrificed his life for the salvation 



1. Tardif, pp. 139, HO. 



of his brethren K " " Spain, since Pliilip II has remained closed 
and uninfluenced by the ordinary progress of the human mind 
elsewhere. The monkish and despotic spirit has long preserved 
itself in the midst of ignorance, without, indeed, acquiring strength 
from abroad, but at the same time without permitting the intelli- 
gence of the nation to borrow foreign arms against it 2 ." 

We shall now see this Spanish Catholicism at work, for three 
centuries, assisted by its worthy offspring, Absolutism and the 
Inquisition, and at every ruin, at every crime you meet with, if 
you ask, who has done this ? the reply will assuredly be : the church 
of the Pope, the tyranny of the Catholic kings, the Inquisition of 
the priests. To convince yourselves of the fact, you need only put 
your questions, and listen to the records of history, written, not by 
us, but by men of talent and skill, who have long enjoyed un- 
questionable authority. 

What was the first fruit of the Catholic Inquisition? — The 
expulsion of the Jews and the Moors : " Spain, " says M. Roseew 
Saint-Hilaire, " exterminated them for ever, as poisonous plants, 
from its soil, mortal to heresy. The Jews and the Moors left it in 
turn, carrying with them, the former trade, the latter agriculture, 
from this disinherited land, to which the New World, to repair so 
many losses, vainly bequeathed her sterile treasures. And let it 
not be said that Spain, in thus depriving herself of her most active 
citizens, was not aware of the extent of her loss. All her historians 
concur in the statement that in acting thus she sacrificed her tem- 
poral interests to her religious convictions, and all are at a loss for 
words to extoll such a glorious sacrifice. 

u In banishing the Jews from her territory, Spain, then, acted 
consistently : her conduct was logically just, but according to that 
pitiless logic which ruins states in order to save a principle . From 
that period, therefore, a new era begins for Castille. Until then 
she had been divided from the rest of Europe only by her position; 
foreign, without being hostile, to the ideas of the continent, she had 
not begun to wage war with those ideas ; but the establishment of 
the Inquisition is the first step in the career in which she can never 
stop 3 . 

" It required/' says M. Sismondi, u about one generation, to ac- 
custom the Spaniards to the sanguinary proceedings of the Inquisi- 
tion, and to fanaticise the people. This work, dictated by an in- 
fernal policy, was scarcely accomplished, when Charles the Fifth 



i. Affaires de Rome, pp. 250 to 254. — 2. idttn, p. 53. — 3. Saint-Hilaire, Vol. VI, p. 52. 



48 



began his reign. It was probably the fatal spectacle of the auto- 
da-fe that imparted to the Spanish soldiers their ferocity, so re- 
markable during the whole of that period, which before that time 
was so foreign to the national character *. " 

Who, employing these instruments, depopulated Spain? — The 
Inquisition. " To calculate, " says Llorente, secretary to the Holy 
Office, u the number of victims of the Inquisition were to give 
palpable proof of one of the most powerful and active causes of the 
depopulation of Spain ; for if to several millions of inhabitants of 
which the inquisitorial system has deprived this kingdom by 
the total expulsion of the Jews, the conquered Moors, and the bap- 
tised Moorish, we add about 500,000 families entirely destroyed by 
the executions of the Holy Office, it will be proved beyond a doubt 
that had it not been for this tribunal, and the influence of its 
maxims, Spain would possess 12,000,000 souls above her present 
population, supposed to amount to 1 1,000,000 2 . " 

" The Inquisition ruined and branded with infamy more than 
340,000 persons, whose disgrace was reflected on their families, and 
who bequeathed only opprobrium and misery to their children. 
Add to these more than 100.000 families who emigrated in order 
to escape from this bloodthirsty tribunal, and it will be seen that 
the Inquisition has been the most active instrument of the ruin of 
Spain. But the most disastrous of all the acts which it occasioned 
was the expulsion of the Moors. If we add to those who were 
banished from Spain the countless numbers who perished in the 
insurrections of the sixteenth century, and the 800,000 Jews who 
left the kingdom, it will be seen that the country lost, in the course 
of a hundred and twenty years, about three millions of its most 
industrious inhabitants 3 . " 

" The advisers of Philip HI said to him with affright : The 
houses are falling in ruins, and none rebuild them ; the inhabitants 
flee from the country, villages are abandoned, fields left unculti- 
vated, and churches deserted. The Cortes in their turn said to 
him : If the evil is not remedied, there will soon be no peasants 
left to till ground, no pilots to steer the ships, none will marry. 
The kingdom cannot subsist another century, if a wholesome 
remedy be not found 4 . " 

1. Sismondi, vol. m, p. 265. — 2. Llorente, vol. iv, p. 242. — 3. Weiss, vol. n. pp. 60, 61. 
4. Here are, according to M. de Laboide, a few comparisons between the old and the new 



population. 

Sarragossa in the 16th century 
Estramadura under the Moors. 



Old. New. 
350,000 10,000 
40,000 5,000 



Carry forward. 



390,000 15,000 



What ruined agriculture? — The Romish Church and the Ca- 
tholic kings; first, by " superannuated institutions, that coun- 
teract in almost everything the designs of beneficent Nature : no 
portion of the Old World, with but few exceptions, presents amore 
naked and wretched aspect than Spain, which ought to be its 
most beautiful region *. " 

Next, because " Spain is in w T ant of hands for agriculture, 
although vagrants and beggars are more numerous there than 
in any other country in Europe. The clergy, who recruit among 
those who wish to escape from labour and indigence, deprive agri- 
culture of too many hands 2 . " 

Besides, " the excessive frequency of religious feasts tended 
greatly to increase the indolence of the Spaniards. In Castille the 
number of holidays a man w^as obliged to celebrate amounted to 
one third of his life-time. Thus the labourer is deprived of his oc- 
cupation, and necessarily contracts habits of indolence. The 
greatest sufferer is the poor day-labourer, who can maintain his 
family only by his work \." 

" Lastly, the ecclesiastical tithe, the royal tithe, and other addi- 
tional rates, constituted so burdensome a tax, that those who cul- 
tivated the ground were discouraged by it 

Who created, supported, and employed the services of those 
pestilent hordes of beggars and vagrants? — The Catholic convents 
and monasteries. " The entire Peninsula, at the time of Charles 
the Fifth, swarmed with vagrants and beggars. The emperor hav- 
ing directed that those who were really in need should be relieved, 



Brought forward. 390,000 15,000 

Montijo in the 17th century 10,000 3,600 

Kingdom of Seville in the 16th century 200,000 96,000 

— of Cordova in the 17 th century 60,000 35,000 

— of Leon in the 16th centurv at Pdo-Seco 32,000 6,000 

— Medina del Campo " 60,000 6,000 

— Salamanca 50,000 13,000 

(Burgos 40,000 8,000 

Old Castille, in the 16 th century. \ Albie 25,000 2,000 

( Olviedo 13,600 2,000 

Grenada, in the 16th century 80,000 50,000 

/LaPuebla 10,000 1,200 

\ Toledo 200,000 25,000 

New Castille, in the 16th centurv. < Casarubiose 1,°60 500 

) Santa Olalla , 3,000 300 

VValdemoro 6,000 2,800 

Ciudadreal 25,000 9,000 

Paeza, under the Moors 150,000 15,000 

Malaga 80.000 50,000 



1,137,000 103,800 

(Pages 127, 128.) 

1. Laborde, vol. i, p. 21. — 2. Idem. vol. v, p. 234. — 3. Sempere, p. 205. — 4. Idm, 
vol. ii, pp. Ill and 135. 

T. II. . 4 



50 



and vagrancy repressed, there was no want of theologians who 
attacked such measures as contrary to the morality taught hy 
Jesus Christ. The opinion of the defenders of mendicity prevailed. 
Thus beggars multiplied indefinitely, and in the same proportion 
there grew up among the people an aversion for labour, and the 
other vices consequent upon vagrancy and idleness 1 ." 

Yes, the monks, and the clergy in general, were desirous of pre- 
serving the institution of mendicity and vagrancy, and we shall 
now be made acquainted with their motives : " The honest people 
of the country they inhabit, who cry death to the constitution ! 
death to the nation ! death to commerce ! knowing not what they 
say, but knowing very well that they wish for pillage and 
murder; those vagabonds, like the locusts of the East, who devour 
Spain instead of fertilising it, will disappear when those who use 
them as their instruments (the monasteries who feed them) no 
longer possess the means of supporting them, when a vigorous 
and enlightened administration will know how to keep them 
within bounds, and find them employment V 

The following is still more clearly expressed : " For their mu- 
tual interests as castes the clergy distribute provisions among the 
peasants, and pamper their indolence on condition that the latter 
will obey, defend, and protect them ; and the most palpable re- 
sult of this alliance is that the clergy, purchasing at a sufficiently 
moderate price that brutal strength the direction of which they 
reserved to themselves, became in the end a power out of all pro- 
portion with all the others : the principal and predominant power 
of the State V 

' ' To form an idea of the number of these beggars and vagrants, 
the monkish militia, it is well to know that there were in Spain, 
in the seventeenth century, 9,088 monasteries, without mention- 
ing nunneries, which insensibly gained possession of the whole 
kingdom by donations, brotherhoods, chaplaincies, or by pur- 
chases \." 

But do not imagine that in this respect the nineteenth century 
is far in advance of the seventeenth : " The priests, the convents/' 
says M. de Laborde,"the churches, the saints' days, exhaust Spain. 
The workman's earnings are squandered in providing for the 
pleasures of the table and in gaming, in presents to monks, to 
convents, to chapels, in contributions to brotherhoods, in illumi- 
nating altars, in alms given to healthy beggars, which last en- 

1. Sempere, vol. n, pp. 202, 203. 2. Laborde, vol. v, p. 215. — 3. Gueroult, pp. Ill, 
112. — 4. Sempere, vol. n, pp. 27 to 29. 



51 

courages idleness and vice in a great number of individuals, who 
often find it more agreeable to degrade themselves by begging 
than to earn their livelihood by honourable labour : you cannot 
therefore move a step in the street , especially at night, without 
being assailed by a multitude of these wretches \" 

At the present day, as in the seventeenth century, the convents 
support this militia, which they well know how to make use of : 
" that horde of vagabonds," says our modern traveller, "from I to 
500,000 in number , who are supplied with soup at the gates of 
convents, or beg alms at the churches ; those villains who belong to 
the party that pays them, and who compel by terror... " 

What has wasted the Treasury? — The Catholic institutions : 
a The cause of the bad state of the finances in Spaiu is in the in- 
stitutions which divert from their proper destination articles 
made of taxable materials, to sink and waste them in unproduc- 
tive channels ; institutions that destroy in the lower classes the 
love of industry and property, while they extinguish in the more 
enlightened classes every feeling, every hope of amelioration. 
The clergy possess in Spain a revenue which exceeds the whole 
amount of the taxes. They receive in the tithes what the landed 
proprietors might devote to the necessities of the State. The 
government, unable to levy sufficient taxes, is obliged to have re- 
course to burdensome loans V 

" The nobles and the clergy possess almost all the soil ; one- 
third of the Spanish territory belongs to a few families, a few 
chapters, and a few religious orders. Sufficient establishments are 
wanting for the improvement of the soil ; the farmers have more 
ground than they can cultivate ; the landlords do not watch over 
their property, their lordly mansions are failing in ruins, their 
woods disappear beneath the destructive axe of their agents, their 
grounds are uncultivated V 

ec The ecclesiastical and civil mortmains impede the progress 
of agriculture... Almost all Spain is the inalienable property of 
the nobles, the religious corporations, or the communities, which 
alliances, successions, and legacies tend continually to increase. 
The little ground which is, as it were, in circulation is no longer 
sufficient for the investment of capitals acquired in trade; thus 
society is solely composed of usufructuaries who are freeholders or 
farmers, but all equally careless... The farmers, having only 
leases of three or four years, try to turn the land quickly to 



1. Laborde, vol. II, pp. 305, 306. — 2. /dem, vol. V, pp t 149, 150. — 3. ldem t 



52 



account without improving it, and entire fields lie fallow i " 
"In 1826, there were in Spain I §0,000 clergymen, each con- 
suming annually 184- pounds of meat, or eight times and a half 
the average consumption of a layman, which was from 20 to 
22 pounds 2 /' 

What was the cause of the ignorance so general and so profound 
in Spain? — The Catholic Inquisition : " At the time of the Re- 
formation, when the minds of all were solely occupied with reli- 
gious controversies, the Inquisition succeeded in preventing the 
establishment of any reformed community in Spain by burning all 
innovators as soon as they appeared. By this terrible example, 
that body deterred the rest of the nation from all metaphysical 
speculations and religious meditations; in short, from all occupa- 
tions of the mind that might lead to such dreadful dangers on 
earth, and which were represented as exposing the soul to dangers 
still more dreadful in the life to come. 

" The commissaries of the Holy Office received orders to oppose 
the introduction of books written by the partisans of modern phi- 
losophy, as reprobated by Saint Peter and Saint Paul, and ordered 
information to be given against persons known to be attached to 
the principles of the insurrection 3 ." 

" Theological censure attacked even works on politics, and on 
natural, civil, and international law. The consequence is, that 
those appointed to examine publications condemn and proscribe 
all works necessary for the diffusion of knowledge among the 
Spaniards. The books that have been published on mathematics, 
astronomy, natural philosophy, and several other branches of 
science connected with those, are not treated with more favour 

" The Inquisition is perhaps the most active cause of that in- 
tellectual death that visited Spain at the close of the seventeenth 
century. With the illusory object of preserving the purity of the 
Catholic faith, that tribunal erected an impassable barrier between 
the Peninsula and the rest of Europe. It encouraged ignorance, 
and instituted a censorship even for works on jurisprudence, phi- 
losophy, and politics, and for novels that reflected on the avarice 
and rapacity of the priests, their dissolute conduct, and their hypo- 
crisy. It commanded the professors of oriental languages to de- 
liver into the hands of its commissaries the Hebrew and Greek 

Bibles in their possession Certain portions of the Imitation of 

Jesus Christ were interdicted, as well as the treatises of another 



1. Laborde, vol. i, Introduction, pp. 13, 14. — 2. idem, p. 115. — 3. Llorente, vol. iv, 
p. 99, _ 4. idem, p. 420. 



53 



author (Luis de Grenada), on prayer, on meditation, and on de- 
votion l . " 

" Many learned Spaniards, for want of august protection, were 
arrested (by order of the Holy Inquisition), and underwent much 
persecution; others were obliged to expatriate themselves. His- 
tory became clouded with fables; and jurisprudence, far from 
being unravelled, grew daily more confused and obscure 2 . " 

Lastly, if it be asked what has corrupted the morals both of the 
clergy and the laity of former times and of the present day, the 
answer is still : Catholic superstition ! " There were at no other 
period, in the Peninsula, so many foundations of convents and 

chaplancies as during the seventeenth century There were 

in the diocese of Calahorra 18,000 chaplaincies, and in the arch- 
bishopric of Seville more than 1-4,000 Notwithstanding all 

this devotion, morals were never so relaxed in Spain as during 

that period 'Lewdness/ said Cespedes, ' has so spread among 

us that although our morals have been depraved for a very long 
space of time, they were never corrupted by a greater inunda- 
tion of vice than at the present time/ Cabrera affirmed that of 
the 18,000 priests of the bishopric of Calahorra, the greater 
number were vagabonds. In our own day a great many indivi- 
duals who abandon themselves to all the excesses of superstition 
live in the imperturbable belief that they have full permission to 
continue their criminal practices, without fearing God or the devil, 
if they always wear on their necks the scapulary of the Virgin of 
Mount Carmei, and continually repeat a Salve to the blessed Mary, 
because they are persuaded that they shall not die without con- 
fession, that they shall go to purgatory, thence to issue on the 
Saturday following, with the assistance of the Mother of God, in order 
to ascend with her into Heaven 3 . " 

Let us conclude with a few lines from M. de Lamennais : 
" A testimony too unanimous to leave room for doubt accuses a 
portion of the Spanish clergy of participating in the relaxation of 
morals, and thereby giving it a sort of shameful consecration. 
This practical corruption of Christian morality, fostered by ignor- 
ance of the principles of the Gospel, and connected with pre- 
judices oddly superstitious, is the great evil of Catholicism in 
Spain. Every violation of precepts is tolerated there, and reli- 
gious practices, badly understood, are made to cover all. The 
sort of compensation by which some consciences imagine that 



1. Weiss, vol. ii, pp. 319 to 321. — 2. Sempere, voL i, p. 133. — 3. Llorente, vol. n, p. 432. 



54 

certain acts of devotion may atone for certain crimes, the little 
horror they often feel for the greatest atrocities, the simple feeling 
of security with which they indulge in their vicious habits, or form 
resolutions of revenge, the strange motives of that security, the un- 
definable mixture of dissoluteness sometimes carried to the extreme 
with apparent piety, those souls having all hell within them, calm 
before the altar, those hands stained with blood joining in prayer 
without being agitated with the slightest tremor, all this fills one 
with astonishment and consternation; a false confidence in the 
protection of a certain saint, or Madonna, has utterly confused the 
notions of good and evil, and even the notion of repentance. All 
this most undeniably proves that the internal Christian feeling has 
been weakened to a deplorable degree. Anything similar is scarce- 
ly to be found elsewhere except in Italy, and in particular among 
the Abruzzi, where robbery excites no indignation, and is even 
practised devoutly. (Affaires de Rome.) 

Such details tire in the end. Let us, then, take a general view 
of those morals which are the growth of Catholicism in Spain : " A 
remarkable trait, " says M. Sismondi, " is the small degree of 
horror and remorse which the crime of murder occasions in Spain. 
In no nation are duels and assassinations more frequent. The 
guilty are exposed, it is true, to the vengeance of the relations, and 
to the pursuit of justice ; but they are under the protection of re- 
ligion and public opinion, they flee from convent Jo convent, and 
from church to church, and all the clergy declare, in their pulpits 
and confessionals, that it is a duty, abandoning the dead, to shelter 
the living from the hand of justice. The same religious prejudice 
exists in Italy : an assassin is always sure to be favoured, in the 
name of Christian charity, by all connected with the church, and by 
that portion of the people who are more immediately influenced 
by the priests ; therefore, in no country have assassinations been 
more frequent than in Italy and in Spain, and when the guilty 
have performed the expiation imposed by their confessors, they 
think they have washed away all stain. Such expiations are 
rendered more easy from their being the source whence the priests 
derive their wealth. An endowment for masses in behalf of the 
deceased, an alms given to the church, in short, a pecuniary sa- 
crifice in some measure proportioned to the fortune of the criminal, 
is always sufficient to wipe out the stain of blood; thus assassina- 
tions were more rare in all Pagan Greece than they are in a single 
village in Spain l . " 



i. Sismondi, vol. iv, pp. 6 to 8. 



" Not only those whom passion urges to crime, in Spain, but 
those who exercise the most shameful and most guilty professions, 
courtesans, thieves, assassins, are sincere believers; a domestic 
and daily religious worship is oddly mixed up with their excesses ; 
they continually introduce religion into their conversation, even 
the refined blasphemies, scarcely ever heard but in the Italian or 
Spanish language, are an additional evidence of their belief. It 
is a sort of hostility to supernatural powers, with which they feel 
themselves in constant relation, and which they delight in brav- 
ing whenever they think they have cause to be revenged on 
them 1 , n 

"The two reigns of Philip III and Philip IV were always more 
degrading to the Spanish nation. The ministers sold all favours to 
the highest bidder, the nobility bowed beneath the ignominious 
yoke of favourites and upstarts, and the people were ruined by 
cruel extortions. The clergy, joining their despotic influence to 
that of the ministry, endeavoured, not to reform such odious abuses, 
but to stifle every voice that rose in complaint. Reflections, 
thoughts on religion, were punished as crimes ; and, while under 
every other despotic government actions alone, or the outward 
manifestation of opinion, are amenable to the law, in Spain the 
monks pursued liberal sentiments even into the sanctuary of a 
man's conscience, in order to proscribe them 2 . "■■ 

(( We must not attribute to Calderon himself his ignorance of the 
manners of foreign countries. The circle of uninterdicted attain- 
ments was becoming daily more contracted; all books descriptive 
of foreign manners or foreign culture were prohibited under severe 
penalties, for there was not one, but in its very silence, was a bitter 
satire on the government and religion of Spain. How could the 
government allow the people to acquire a knowledge of the ancients, 
the very essence of whose existence was political liberty? how sutler 
them to form an acquaintance with the moderns, the foundation of 
whose prosperity and glory is religious liberty ? Had the Spaniards 
been enlightened by such studies, would they have tolerated the 
Inquisition 3 ? " 

" The Spanish nation seemed endowed with everything : ima- 
gination, intelligence, profundity, constancy, elevation, courage; it 
might have surpassed all others : its religion has almost always 
rendered these brilliant qualities useless. Let us take care not 
to allow a mere name to lead us into the error of saying or be- 



1. SismoMi, VOl. IV, p. 34. — 2. Idem, pp. 50 to 53.-3. Idem, pp. 128 to 130. 



56 



lieving that the religion of Spain and our own are the same 1 ." 

" In the former half of the eighteenth century the lives of the 
saints dramatised were published and, represented : these were, for 
the most part, ridiculous and scandalous, yet they obtained, not 
only the approbation, but the praise, of the Inquisition 2 ." 

We will now, before we close the subject, give a summary from 
the pen of the secretary of the Inquisition himself; let our readers, 
after the perusal of it, ask themselves, if Catholicism has moralised 
Spain : " You shall see," says Llorente, " the Inquisitors, abusing 
the bad policy and the weakness of the Spanish ministry, treat with 
contempt the viceroys of Arragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, reduce 
them to the humiliating necessity of craving absolution for having 
defended ordinary jurisdiction and the royal prerogative, and 
refuse to absolve these pusillanimous men until they had submitted 
to the shame of a public penance. I will observe that they contri- 
buted to the decline of good taste in literature, from Philip II to 
Philip V, and almost extinguished the light of knowledge by their 
ignorance of the canon law, and by their blind deference to the 
advice of the monks, condemning, as Lutheran, propositions incon- 
testably true. 

(C It will be acknowledged that the conduct of the Holy Office has 
been one of the causes that have decreased the population of Spain, 
by obliging innumerable families to quit the kingdom, by consign- 
ing to the flames more than 300,000 persons, and by arresting, out 
of a blind zeal for religion, the progress of the arts, of industry, and 
commerce, which would have constituted the glory and happiness 
of the nation, if free admission into the kingdom had been granted 
to the English, French, and Dutch 3 . " 

" The illegal use of the censorship, by means of which this 
tribunal could strike at will the first magistrates, such as the vice- 
roys, and still more easily subjects of an inferior class, placed in its 
hands the formidable weapon with which it overthrew all who 
durst oppose its views ; and, if that measure was insufficient, a 
warrant of arrest was not usually slow in coming to secure the 
victory in its hands 4 . " 

" The inquisitors arrogated a right of examining the affairs that 
concerned the police of the towns, and many others, such as taxes, 
contraband goods, commerce, the navy, arts and trades, the regula- 
tions of the corporations of mechanics, and the preservation of woods 
and forests. They pretended to a right of judging in all cases 



1. Sismondi, p. 179. — 2. idem, p. 221. — 3. Llorente, vol. i, Introduction, pp. 15 and 16. 

— 4. Idem, vol. II, p. 497. 



37 



relating to these, especially if among the individuals sued or impli- 
cated in such cases there was a single man in any way connected 
with the Inquisition, were he only a sweeper or some other low 
functionary, temporarily employed in the service of the tribunal... 
At the same time they would not allow a criminal, even a robber, 
to be arrested in an inquisitor's house, either in town or country H " 
Before we terminate this account of Spain, taken from documents 
of several years' standing, we wished to know whether, at the pre- 
sent moment, anything can be said in favour of this poor country. 
We have procured a work entitled : Spain in 1850 ; a Survey of her 
Most Recent Improvements. Tf, then, the above statements can be 
modified, they will be so by this work, the very title of which 
shows benevolence towards Spain. We have perused it, and it has 
only confirmed the opinion we had formed from the documents 
already quoted. In effect, the author of Spain in 1850, M. Maurice 
Block, affirms that the misfortunes of Spain do not proceed from 
the character of its inhabitants, but rather from the Inquisition. 
This is precisely what we have ourselves stated. He gives an 
account of a little progress recently made in agriculture, industry, 
and commerce. But, besides that it is impossible for a nation not 
to profit by the progress made in neighbouring countries, it must be 
remarked that here the progress is especially due to foreigners, to 
the English; this therefore only corroborates all that we have stated 
above. 

Besides, the improvements described by M. Block belong much 
more to the future than to the present. At every page he is oblig- 
ed to say : " There is hope, " " before long , " " probably ; " 
and, as to ameliorations really accomplished, they are so trifling 
that in reality their insignificance only renders more conspicuous 
the gratuitous efforts of their apologist to extol them . Every success 
recorded by M. Block is surrounded by so many restrictions, that, 
after all deductions are made, what remains is scarcely perceptible. 
We will quote an example of this from that portion of the work 
which treats of primary instruction : we shall abridge our extract, 
not otherwise commenting upon it than by printing in italics the 
passages to which we are desirous of calling more particularly our 
reader's attention : " The civil war," says the author, " has greatly 
retarded the progress of public instruction. The necessity of reform 
was acknowledged at the very beginning of the century, and 
numerous attempts have since been made, but without much sue- 



1. Llorente, vol. 11, p. SOI. 



58 



cess... Until a rather recent period, primary instruction in Spain 
was in a sad state. It was at the mercy of the municipalities, who 
did little or nothing for it... In 1825, general regulations were 
published ; these regulations obliged masters to undergo examina- 
tions i they were certainly equal to any regulations of the like kind 
that existed in the most advanced nations. Unfortunately they were 
scarcely executed at all. 

u In 1835, primary instruction seemed to have made some pro- 
gress. But what degree of confidence can be placed in these figures? 
Without exaggeration, what was the state of these schools ? This 
profusion of schools is but a fallacious appearance; the existence 
of a school is often merely nominal. Two-thirds of the professors 
have not presented themselves for examination. What can be expect- 
ed from them but the propagation of errors, and so superficial 
an instruction that it serves only to waste a precious time in sterile 
occupations? The child who, on leaving school, knows only how 
to connect with difficulty the letters of the alphabet, or laboriously 
to trace a few letters on paper, derives little or no benefit from the 
instruction received ; yet such is all the knowledge acquired by the 
generality of the poorer classes. 

" The central school was inaugurated in April, 1838 ; but great 
efforts were required to obtain pupils for it. 

u We have seen that in 1835 two-thirds of the pupils had no 
diplomas; at present, in 1848, the proportion is more favourable." 

Then follow figures which show that these two-thirds have dimi- 
nished to one-half. It will be readily admitted that when half the 
teachers are without diplomas, there is much room for improve- 
ment. 

Here follows a table showing that there is in Spain only one 
pupil for twenty inhabitants ! whereas, in Prussia, there is one for 
every six inhabitants, and in England one for every nine. 

As to the schools, "there are 10,525 without buildings appro- 
priated to them. Some are kept under the church porch, or in the 
entrance-hall of the town-house. " 

It will be admitted that if this state of things is a progress, the 
previous state must have been very backward indeed. 

On beginning this account of Spain, we asked ourselves the fol- 
lowing question : Does Catholicism elevate or degrade nations ? 
We described the state of this country at the end of the fifteenth 
century, civilised by the Moors, enriched by America, luxuriant 
with prosperity. After this brilliant picture, we presented, 
without any intervening twilight, the thick gloom of the present : 



50 



beggarly, squalid, ignorant immoral, criminal Spain ; and, struck 
with the contrast, we inquired the cause of it. Many voices have 
replied : The cause is Catholicism and its offspring, Tyranny and 
the Inquisition. It is not we that have said it; it is M. Llorente, 
secretary to the Inquisition ; Count de Laborde, aide-de-camp at 
the French court, attached to the Court of Spain; M. de Sismondi, 
a learned man, serious, moderate, and universally respected; 
M. Weiss, professor at the College of France; M. R. Saint-Hilaire, 
professor of the Sorbonne ; lastly, M. de Lamennais, then an abbe. 
All these distinguished men have been unanimous; all have accused 
Catholicism . Have they all been deceived ? We leave our readers 
to answer the question ; for ourselves, to complete our task, after 
having seen what a nation under the guidance of Catholicism has 
become in the space of three centuries, we shall proceed to exa- 
mine what, during the same period, another nation has become 
under the inspiration of Protestantism. We have taken a survey 
of Spain ; let us now turn to England. 



\ 

I 

' 'j 
] 

i 



ENGLAND 



IN THE 16 lh AND 19 th CENTURIES. 



We have seen what Catholic Spain has become, in the course of 
the last three centuries ; let us now examine what transformation 
Protestant England has undergone in the same lapse of time. If 
the two nations march at the same pace on the road to progress, 
notwithstanding the different impulsions which each should receive 
on account of the dissimilarity in their respective faiths, it will 
he natural to conclude that this faith plays an inactive part in their 
civilisation; but if, on the contrary, the two nations take opposite 
courses; if one advances while the other retrogrades, Ave shall 
have double reason for supposing that their religions have several- 
ly prepared the elevation of the one, and the decline of the other. 

In the first place, let us proceed with England as we did with 
Spain; and, in order to measure the distance we have to travel 
over, let us fix the point from which we start. Let us see what the 
state of England was at the time of the Reformation. 

While Spain has seen her population diminish to such a degree, 
that we have been enabled to furnish a long list of cities that 
have lost ten-elevenths of their inhabitants, what change has been 
wrought in the population of Great Britain ? During the reign of 
Elizabeth, "hi 1570, it amounted to five millions; in 1830, it rose 
to 15 millions l . " 

Thus, while Spain has lost 10 men out of 11, in England there 

1. De Jonnes, vol. i, pp. 51 and 52. 



62 



have been 3 births for 1 death. The relative proportion between 
the two countries is one to thirty ! 

If this increase was the result of immigration, it would still be a 
sign of prosperity, for strangers do not come in search of misery; 
but we learn from the same author, that since that period morta- 
lity in England has diminished by two-fifths, so that the augmenta- 
tion of the population is evidently the result of an amelioration in 
their moral and physical condition; and, as M. de Jonnes remarks : 
" Every individual in Ed gland has now twice as much chance of 
arriving at old age as he had fifty years ago. This is not an in- 
crease of population like that which formerly took place in Ireland, 
where a family saw the number of its members doubled or tripled, 
without enlarging their habitation; for while under Henry VIII 
the number of houses in England was estimated at 520,000, at pre- 
sent they amount to 2,463,820. " The population is only treble 
what it was, but the habitations have increased five-fold, which is 
another indication of prosperity, in the opinion of M. de Jonnes, 
who considers a small number of persons inhabiting the same 
dwelling as a proof of a high degree of civilisation ; and who adds, 
" tbat, in this respect, England is more advanced than the other 
nations of Europe 1 ." 

Let us now see what were the elements of this population of 
England, at that time Roman Catholic. 

First, The Clergy. — In 1608, there existed in England, 557 large 
estates in land; 437 of which (one-fourth), were religious establish- 
ments. Here M. de Jonnes gives an account of the prodigality of 
the archbishops and bishops of that time, and then adds : u The 
landed property, the revenues of which defrayed this prodigious 
luxury, comprised, in 1401, one-third of the surface of the kingdom, 
as we learn from the remonstrances of the Commons, on this 
subject, addressed to king Henry VIII. Hallam even proves, 
from other authorities, that this property extended to one-half the 
kingdom 2 . 3> 

If the Catholic clergy had to decide the question, they would 
probably say, those were the good old times. But we, who form 
part of the mass of the nation, think it far preferable that the 
clergy should be less rich, and thereby less exposed to temptation, 
and that the soil should belong to those who cultivate it, and that 
wealth should be the reward of labour. We prefer the state of 
things described by M. de Jonnes : " In 1536, at the time of the 



l. De Jonnes vol. i, p. 92. 2* ukm, pp. Hi and 112. 



63 



Reformation, the regular clergy were composed of 50,000 monks 
and nuns, who inhabited 508 convents and monasteries, of which 
the revenues amounted to 752,800/., making more than 3,760,000 fr. 
in these days. The number of establishments suppressed, ac- 
cording to Speed, is as follows : 



•22 Archbishoprics or Bishoprics. 
11 Deaneries. 
60 Archeaconries. 
394 Cathedrals. 



8,803 Benefices. 

605 Monasteries. 
2,374 Chapels. 



" The revenues of these establishments were computed at 
1,690,520/., worth five times as much as now, owing to the differ- 
ence of prices. These revenues were considerably augmented 
by alms and gifts. Fish calculated, that, in 1527, England con- 
tained 520,000 houses, which gave to each monk one shilling-and- 
eightpence a year. It appears that there were then above 65,000 
ecclesiastics ; which gives a priest or monk for every AO inhabit- 
ants, as in Italy in 1788 ^ " 

At present there is, " in the Church of England, one minister 
for 333 persons; amongst the Dissenters 1 for 380. " On an 
average, 1 minister for 360 Protestants. Nine times fewer eccle- 
siastics than in the time of the Roman Catholics. 

It is usual to reproach the Established Church with the immense 
revenues of her dignitaries. But, without extenuating the fault, 
we may retort it with double force on Catholicism. These abuses 
are an inheritance of the past; and, if they have left traces in 
England, the reason is that Romish usages had taken such deep 
root that it has not been possible, even in three centuries, to extir- 
pate them completely. But it must be remarked that now, instead 
of 1 ecclesiastic for 40 persons, as in papish times, Protestant Eng- 
land has, on an average, including the Dissenters, only 1 minister 
for 360 laymen, and that the wealth of the clergy of the Established 
Church, although still too extensive, only amounts to one -sixteenth, 
not to a half of the landed property. If, now, we reckon all these 
different data together, the increase of the population, the reduction 
in the number of ecclesiastics, and the diminution of their wealth, 
we shall find, on the whole, an immense difference ; with regard 
to the nation on one hand, and on the other to the clergy. The 
nation, with a population three times more numerous, has to con- 
tribute eight times less ; this contribution is, in consequence, only 
the twenty-fourth part of what had been paid before : (( As to the 



1. De Jonnes, vol. i, pp. 112 and lio. 



64 

clergy, the number of ecclesiastics having been diminished by one- 
ninth, and their wealth by one-eighth, the share of each would be 
about the same, if the price of things had not increased five-fold l , 
which has reduced the average revenue to a fifth of what it was 
formerly. " 

In the sixteenth century the nobility rivalled the clergy in 
riches and powers ; for, according to the same author, they pos- 
sessed the other half of the landed property. This is easily 
understood, at a period when the people were nothing. Vil- 
lenage had been legally abolished by prescription towards the end 
of the fifteenth century , but, in fact, some remains of it were still 
in existence in the following one, since Elizabeth then emancipated 
the rest of her slaves. The barons, who, under the Norman dy- 
nasty, were the sole great landed proprietors, numbered about 700. 
In order to give us an idea of this powerful aristocracy, M. de 
Jonnes informs us that: "Count Mortagne had 963 manors; 
Alain, -4-22; Robert Mowbray, 280, etc.; and that 557 great proprie- 
tors possessed together 515 square leagues. 

"In these times of public misery,'" adds our author, "the riches of 
these barons were immense. The Earl of Lancaster spent 1 09,600/. 
annually. The lands of the nobles comprised 3,5-40 square leagues. 

" In l£Oi, three centuries later, although the nobles were 
reduced to one-half of their number, they reckoned still 28,575 
members " 

Now let us transport ourselves at once to the end of the seven- 
teenth century, when the Reformation had already had time to 
exert its influence, and we shall find that the nobility is no longer 
diminished only by one-half in three centuries, but by nine- 
tenths in a single one; and at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, of the tenth part that remained, there existed little more 
than a third. In comparing these two extreme points, we shall 
find the proportion between the number of the nobles before the 
Reformation and their number at the present time as thirty to one. 

We have not to decide whether the existing aristocracy, and 
the Established Church of the present day, are a benefit to England ; 
but to compare the present with the past. And it is precisely 
those who complain of these remains of power being left in the 
hands of the nobles and the clergy who will be most easily con- 
vinced how deplorable was the state of things in former times. 

We must anticipate an objection. These changes may be con- 



1. De Jonnes, vol. i, p. 113. — 2. idem, p. iu etc. 



65 



sidered as the result of many causes having no connection with the 
Reformation : hut then we may ask why the same results have 
not heen obtained in the Catholic nations of Europe, and especially 
in Spain, where the nobles, if not rich, are at least numerous, and 
where they continue to depress the people by their arrogance and 
indolence as much as in former times? 

Now let us examine what was the state of the people next to 
this clergy and nobility, who divided between them all the wealth 
of the kingdom? " In 1688, more than a third of the population 
was reduced to indigence;" and remark, that this state of things 
was already an amelioration. But even taking this as our point 
of departure, let any one compare it with the beginning of this 
century : 

" In 1803, this third is reduced to a ninth. " Thus, more than 
a quarter of the nation, in passing from Catholicism to the Reform- 
ed faith, passed at the same time from poverty to competence; we 
may therefore naturally suppose that the comforts of the other 
three-fourths had increased in a still greater proportion, and pre- 
cisely at the time when Spain was becoming overrun with men- 
dicants. 

The following figures afford another proof of the amelioration 
of the English people since the Reformation : 
(i In 1690, the gross product of agriculture amounted to 8,275,000£. 
In 1832, to 73,866,000/." 

If this increase in the productions of agriculture, at present 
nine times greater still, was the result of the cultivation of waste 
land, that of itself would be a great benefit; but it has its source 
in causes bearing more directly on our subject : " Cultivation/* 
says M. de Jonnes, " has not made much progress in extent ; the 
present superiority is entirely owing to the improvements intro- 
duced in the mode of farming, which have obtained an immense 
increase in crops raised from the same extent of land *. " 

Moreover, the food of the people has not only improved in 
quantity, but in quality: "In 1760, the quantity of wheat consum- 
ed by each person in England was less than half what it is now; or 
rather the people consumed an inferior sort of bread, and not 
wheaten bread. At present, the progress of wealth and Civilisation 
has nearly excluded the use of any other grain as food but wheat 2 ." 

"At the period of the fall of the Stuarts, the consumption of meat 
was 74 pounds for every person. 



1. De Jonnes, vol. i, pp. 198, 199.— 2. Idem, p. 201. 
T. II. 



5 



C 6 



"InlBQl, the coQsumption had risen to 160 pounds and a half. 
Thirty years later the augmentation was scarcely perceptible in the 
consumption of each individual, but very considerable in the 
number of animals killed, since the population had increased by 
one-half 1 ." 

Here is another means of judging, at a single glance, of the 
difference between the past and the present, with regard to the 
distribution of wealth in England. Formerly the nobility and 
clergy possessed nearly the whole ; now the annual revenue is 
divided as follows : 



" Upper classes .. 1/5 th 

Professions 1/5 th 

Farmers 1/4 th 

Tradespeople 1/8 th and 1/2 

Working classes 1/3 d and 1/2 

Infirm , 1/30 th 2. " 

That is to say, four-fifths of the annual revenue have passed out 
of the hands of the upper classes into those of the people , who left 
Catholicism for the Reformation. 

In order to judge of the steps that England has taken in advance, 
while Spain has been constantly retrograding, we must say a few 
words of their respective colonies. 

Here the advantage is easily ascertained. In the 16 th century, 
England had not a single colony beyond seas : Spain on the contrary 
was in possession of half the New W orld. At present we have only 
to reverse the terms in order to arrive at the truth, Spain in 
three centuries has lost nearly all ; and England, after having plant- 
ed a colony in America, which now free, enriches and does honour 
to the mother country, has acquired the richest and most extensive 
possessions in India. We shall not content ourselves with general 
assertions, but to obtain more credit we will borrow the words of a 
learned author disinterested in the question : "The Spanish empire 
extended itself by degrees in the New World, and comprised during 
more than three centuries the following countries : Saint-Domingo, 
Cuba, Porto-Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, Columbia, Venezuela, Rio- 
de-la-Plata, Peru, Chili, Trinidad, Florida, Louisiana, the Canary 
Isles, the Philippines, and her penal settlements in Africa ; forming 
together an extent of -471,053 square leagues, with a population 
of 19,743,000 inhabitants. 
" Of this empire, twice as vast as that of Rome, all that remains 



i. De Jonnes, vol. r, pp. 217 to 220. — 2. Idem, p. 15L 



to Spain is Cuba and Porto-Rico, the Canaries and the Philippines ; 
which form an extent of 19,000 square leagues, with 3,858,000 
inhabitants. " 

Spain has thus lost twenty-three parts out of twenty-four of her 
colonies. Now, let us see what has happened in this respect in the 
British Empire during the same space of time : 

" England directed her ambition towards Hindostan, and laboured 
unceasingly to establish her rule there. By dint of skill, good 
fortune, and perseverance, she has succeeded in founding in Asia 
an empire very differently governed and defended from that of the 
ancient Spanish colonies. 

"This empire, added to the other British possessions in the two 
worlds, forms an immense empire. We shall estimate its extent, 
population, and commerce in the following table : 





Number 
of 

establishments. 


Extent. 
Square leagues. 


Populations. 
Inhabitants. 


Total 
Commerce. 


Africa 


14 
9 
9 

27 

S 


234 
528 
62,372 
69,700 
40 


400.000 
216,000 
90,526,000 
1,966,000 
77,000 


I. 

4,000,000 
2,240,000 
9,760,000 
18,320,000 
1,600,000 


64 


132,904 


93,185,000 


35,920,000 \ ' 



Thus, whilst Spain has lost twenty-three parts out of twenty-four 
of her colonies, England has conquered a vast territory, well- 
governed and well-defended, on which she did not possess a foot of 
land at the period from which our comparison begins ; and which 
at the same time, while Spain has lost 20 millions of subjects, 
England has conquered 93 millions, and her commerce with her 
colonies amounts at present to 4-0,000,000/ ! 
We will add a few words on finance, navigation, and education : 
Without gold or silver mines, England possessed, in 1836, 80 mil- 
lions of coined money; five times as much as Spain ever had, even 
when the mines of the New World were at her disposal. And if 
we compare the public wealth of Great Britain at the end of the 
seventeenth century with that of the present time, we shall find 
that in a century and a half it has more than doubled. Danevant 
reckons it, in 1698, at 41,360,000/., two-fifths of its present amount; 



1. De Jomies, vol. n, pp. 96 to 99, 



68 



e * As to navigation, its tonnage amounts in these days to twenty- 
five times as much as under the Stuarts 1 . " 

A single fact is sufficient to give an idea Of the progress of elemen- 
tary instruction. There was in England : 

In 1734, 1 scholar for ever)* 45Q inhabitants. 
In 1833, there was 1 in 5 *. 

It is true that the last report comprises the children of Sunday 
schools, who have in many cases been reckoned already in the day 
schools. But, even if we suppose this to be the case with all, there 
would still remain 1 scholar in 10 inhabitants: that is to say, forty- 
five times more pupils than in the preceding century ! 

We shall now sum up what precedes, and fix with accuracy the 
point from which we start. Before the Reformation, the clergy 
and nobility, with the monarch, were everything in England; and 
the people, recently emancipated, little or nothing. At that time, 
agriculture left a third of the population in indigence; no commerce, 
no manufactures, the finances at a low ebb, and lastly, scarcely two 
persons out of a hundred knowing how to read. The Reformation 
of the sixteenth century burst forth; its principles spread abroad, 
and produced the results that we are now going to examine. 

We have seen what was the state of England before the sixteenth 
century; let us see what it is now. Every one will understand that 
we cannot undertake to follow her, step by step, during the three 
hundred years that separate these two periods ; for the influence of 
Catholicism did not cease to be felt from the very moment when com- 
munications with the Pope were interrupted, nor could Pro- 
testantism produce all its fruits on the day the Reformation 
was proclaimed. The more distant, then, the two periods are from 
each other at which we shall examine the state of England, 
the more certain we shall be to discern in the former period the 
unmixed fruits of Catholicism, and in the latter the pure effects of the 
Reformation. However, if we cannot follow the development of the 
tree in all its stages, let us examine with care what was the seed 
first deposited in the earth, that we may know to what we should 
attribute the good or bad fruit that will present itself to our view : 
u The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries/"' saysM. Guizot, "have 
produced admirable results; rights have been established, and new 
manners have been created; and they have not only acted power- 
fully upon all our social relations, but upon souls... There is no 
country perhaps in which the principles of religion have possessed, 



1. Be Joanes, vol. it, p. 8j. — 3. Mem, pp. 319 and 324. 



69 



and still exercise, greater power than in England ; but above all they 
are practical, and influence powerfully the conduct, happiness, and 
sentiments of individuals 1 . English civilisation has been parti- 
cularly directed towards the improvement of society ; the amelio- 
ration of the external and public relations of men, and not only of 
his material but his moral existence; to the introduction of more 
justice into society, as well as more comfort; and to the develop- 
ment of his rights as well as happiness 2 . 

M. Pichot expresses the same idea : 4<r Of the democratical fermen- 
tation of the Reformation, and the guarantees given to the Esta- 
blished Church by the House of Brunswick, the result has been a 
more abundant circulation of liberal ideas in England than else- 
where, in religion as well as in politics 3 . " " There, all the differ- 
ent creeds are full of life 

M. Simon goes still farther : not only he affirms that civilisation 
in England is the daughter of religion , but he specifies what this 
religion is, and he contrasts it with that of the fourteenth century 
in the same nation, and with that of France in our days: " I 
read," he says, (i in an old English chronicle that in the 14 th century 
levity of conduct was one of the great faults of the young girls, who 
behaved very indecorously at church, where the greatest indecencies 
were committed. The sanctuary seemed to be transformed into a 
place for gossiping and amusement : the men came there accom- 
panied with their hounds, and with their falcons on their wrists, to 
talk of their affairs, make assignations, and display their fine clothes. 
In the present time, the thousand sects that divide England, from a 
naturaldesireofproselytism,havepreservedreligiousfervour by keep- 
ing watch over each other. In England, you may be of any religion 
you please, but you must have a religion, or you would be expelled 
from society. In France, on the contrary, the Catholic priests would 
prefer your having no religion, to your being of a different one 
from theirs. If we have no religion, they hope that we shall come 
into the bosom of the Church ; if, on the contrary, we adopt with 
fervour some other religious creed, they have less hope ( and in my 
opinion with reason) of converting us 3 . " 

But this first cause has not ceased to operate. We have seen the 
source; the stream still continues to flow, and spreads fertility over 
the field we are about to explore. We shall content ourselves with 
the testimony of a witness, who cannot be suspected of partiality : 
" Religion," says M. d'Haussez," has always a share inthepublic acts 

l. Glrizot, vol. I, p. 12. — 2. Idem, p. 11, — 3, P-ichot, vol. lh p. 38, — k. Idem, p. 42, — 
5. Simon, vol. I, pp. 256, 257, 



70 



of the English; this necessity is so universally recognised, that if a 
town or a new quarter is to be built, there is always a place reserv- 
ed for a church. It is even by this edifice that they begin. It may 
be objected that the building of the church is a matter of specula- 
tion; it may be so, but, if the speculation is productive, we mUst 
conclude that the church is frequented by a great number of the 
faithful s therefore, a religious spirit predominates England. No 
one on coming out of church complains of the length of the service, 
and certainly for indifferent people there is no compensation to be 
found in the trivial eloquence of the orator. Could this be the case 
if religious sentiments were not firmly rooted in the national mind? 
A country where religion is never turned into ridicule , where the 
dogmas of this religion are never discussed but with respect , where 
it takes part in all the acts of government and administration, as 
well as in domestic habits : such a country must be religious S " 

' f Now/' says M . Leon Faucher, " let any one examine what England 
has gained in a century and ahalf in population, wealth, and territory, 
and declare whether, in the history of the world, without excepting 
the conquests of Alexander, or those of the Romans, there is an 
example of such an aggrandisement. England now claims a pre- 
ponderating influence in Europe, and exclusive possession or domi- 
nion in the rest of the world 2 . " 

But, leaving these general considerations, let us enter into details, 
which are more easily understood, and traverse the country after 
the manner of a traveller, visiting towns and fields, houses, manir- 
factories, and marts : 

" The first impression produced by England/' says M. Gustine, " is 
extremely agreeable. The perfect cleanliness, the attention shown 
to little things, the elegance of household arrangements, proclaim a 
prudent and economical people, attached to the spot they inhabit 3 ." 
" The aspect of the interior of the country is cheerful from its perfect 
cultivation and freshness. The fields carefully tilled, surrounded 
by hedges and plantations of trees kept in neat order, resemble 
gardens. It is vain to look for a peasant in the reaper, labourer, or 
ploughman, or for a peasant girl in the gleaner and haymaker; you 
would imagine they were all gentlemen and ladies. The villages, 
built with taste and regularity, are clean, pretty, and kept in good 
order. The soil being fertile in the greater part of the counties, 
there is an abundance of ail kinds of rural productions, land admir- 
ably cultivated, and those magnificent macadamised roads, on 

1. D'Haussez, pp. 281, 274. — 2. Leon Faucher, vol. u, p. 394. — 3. Custine, vol. n, 
pp. 4, 5. 



71 

which one travels never less, and often more, than three leagues an 
hour 1 . Imagine roads, not so broad as our's, not paved, or orna- 
mented with straight rows of trees, but gently winding amidst a 
succession of wooded hills, cultivated valleys, and green pastures; 
roads without ruts, and sanded like the alleys of a garden, with a 
footway fanning along the side. Add to this perpetual verdure 
cottages, in which the beautiful is combined with the useful, and all 
together will give but a faint idea of the mode of travelling in this 
country, and of the rich aspect that it presents 2 . " 

" There is a difference (between England and France) in the roads 
and in the carriages which run on them : there everything is excel- 
lent, beautiful, adm irably neat, convenient, and finished . One cannot 
help acknowledging in all an immense superiority over what exists 
of the kind anywhere else 3 . ?f ce At the stages you never hear the 
swearing of the grooms, and the whip of the coachman is rather a 
part of his costume than an instrument of correction. In this country, 
where everything is so perfectly regulated, and every one knows so 
well how to fulfil the duties of his station, even the horses accomplish 
their tasks better than those of other countries, and that without the 
necessity of brutal correction. You may travel from one end of 
England to the other without ever hearing the sound of the whip 
or the cries of the coachman, which in France strike so disagreeably 
the ears of travellers. 

" We ought to mention the inns, among the wonders of English 
civilisation; they are magnificent in many towns, excellent and well 
supplied in the smallest villages. On arriving, travellers are receiv- 
ed by the innkeeper, whose neat dress testifies his respect for strangers. 
What a traveller prizes most in England is the facility with which 
he can see everything; thanks to the excellence of the means of com- 
munication, he can leave the highway without any fear of being 
stopped by the bad state of cross-roads \ " 

" The appearance of the country-houses in the counties is as 
varied as the fortunes of their owners, and the difference in their 
rank. Here, are seen gardens and fields, running streams and 
lakes, that present the most delightful aspects; there, canals for agri- 
cultural purposes; openings made in avenues to admit the view of a 
village with its gothic church tower; farm-houses, with their nu- 
merous domestic animals; and the humble and picturesque lodge of 
the gamekeeper lost in the forest, and lending a charm to the 
landscape. The hand of man, clearing and pruning, is everywhere 



1. Solitaire, vol. n, p. 493, 494. — 2. Montuli, pp. 17, 19. — 3. D'Haussez, p. 2. — 
4. Soliiaire, vol. n, pp. 30 to 32. 



72 



visible, but the venerable clumps of trees are generally spared; they 
stand in the middle of fields, and afford shelter under their immense 
branches to sheep, deer, fat cattle, young colts, celebrated perhaps 
for their breed, feeding in picturesque groups in the shade of the 
foliage. The grass is carefully cultivated by a peculiar process, and 
one is agreeably surprised at seeing spaces several acres in extent 
devoted to the cultivation of flowers. On a grass-plot of a rich green, 
studded with beautiful shrubs, are flower-beds cut into different 
elegant shapes and full of choice flowers, which vary this delightful 
picture by their sylvan shapes and the rustic simplicity of their 
arrangement 1 . 33 

" You need only enter the cottage of an English peasant, and 
compare it with the dwellings of the greater number of our small 
farmers, to see the difference in the general condition of the two 
populations. Although the French peasant is for the most part a 
landholder, thus adding a little rent and a certain amount of profit 
to his wages, he does not in general live so well as the English 
peasant ; he is not so well clothed, lodged, or fed; he eats more bread, 
but this bread is generally made of rye, buck wheat, or even chesnuts ; 
whereas, the bread of the English peasant is made wholly of wheat. 
The French peasant never eats meat, and the English peasant does V 
" In England, more than elsewhere, the country is worthy of God : 
if it has not everywhere a grand appearance, every field has its pe- 
culiar beauty and charm 3 . This small kingdom, traversed by so 
many roads, canals, and railroads , may be compared to a laurel- 
leaf, with its innumerable veins. Men, ideas, and newspapers cir- 
culate throughout with a rapidity really prodigious. English so- 
ciety is a vast assembly, a great circle, with the consciousness of 
its existence as a collective body *. " 

After having taken a view of the country, let us examine several 
towns, beginning by the metropolis : " On reading the history of 
London, we see how much has been done for its salubrity. The 
width of the streets and footways, the drains, the beauty of the 
parks and squares, the flourishing gardens, the abundance of Wdter, 
the commodiousness of the dwellings, and the decency and clean- 
liness of the whole, have rendered London the healthiest city in the 
world, notwithstanding the humidity of its soil and its inclement 
sky 5 . In London , the people enjoy liberty as a birthright : 
there, every one remains in his own sphere, quietly, without com- 
pulsion, and with habitual dignity. Much may be learned in that 

1. Solitaire, VOl. II, p. 500. — 2. Revue Britannique, 1853, 1st March, p. 928.— 3. PicllOt, 
YOl, I. p. 32, — k. Idem, p. 113, — 5. Blircaild, vol, I, p. 22. 



city in industry, commerce, arts, sciences, and even in medicine, for 
all branches of knowledge have a connection. The English are in 
advance of all other people, because they are the boldest, the most 
persevering, and the most enterprising experimenters of the human 
race l . " 

" On witnessing the grandeur and opulence of London, a foreign- 
er wonders how this metropolis has arrived at such a high de- 
gree of splendour. On a survey of its wide streets, its squares, 
its parks, with the order, cleanliness, and comfort which every- 
where reign, we cannot imagine that this city was long the seat of 
the plague 2 . " 

" At first sight, a stranger is struck with admiration at the 
power of man; afterwards, he feels overwhelmed by the grandeur of 
all around him, and humiliated by a sense of his own littleness. 
Look at those innumerable vessels, of every size and description, 
that cover the river for leagues, and reduce it to the size of a canal; 
the grandeur of the bridges, which appear to have been con- 
structed by giants in order to unite the shores of two worlds. But 
it is particularly at night that London should be seen. Beheld in 
the magical light of millions of lamps, fed by gas, London is 
dazzling ! The wide streets, which appear interminable ; the shops, 
where streams of light adorn with a thousand hues master-pieces of 
human art and industry, produce a bewildering effect: while 
in the day the beauty of the footways, the number and elegance 
of the squares, the immense extent of the parks, with their grace- 
ful curves, the beauty of the trees, the multitude of splendid car- 
riages drawn by superb horses, which crowd the drives, all these 
magnificent realities have a magical effect which dazzles one's 
reason 3 . " 

tf In the wealth, extent, and activity of her commerce, by sea and 
land, London has not, and never had, a rival in the universe : 
it is really marvellous that we endeavour to measure its import- 
ance, by comparing this city, not only to the greatest commercial 
marts of the world, but even to the whole of the states most cele- 
brated for their commercial activity 4 . " 

" The vast basins, known by. the name of Docks, where, classed 
according to their destination, are to be seen the trading vessels of 
the whole universe, with their cargoes, prove what may be done by 
the combined efforts of genius and wealth : nothing is more cal- 
culated to give a just idea of the height which the commercial 



1. Bureaud, vol. i, p. 29. — 2. Idem, p. 33. — 3. Tristan, pp. 2 and 3. — 4. Balbi, p. 491. 



74 

enterprise of England has attained K The environs of London at 
every step show marks of incontestable prosperity. The number 
and style of the country-houses, the splendour and extent of the 
villages, the activity of the circulation, answer the expectations 
raised by the grandeur of the capital 2 . 

" In London, the most scrupulous cleanliness reigns everywhere. 
The pains bestowed on the salubrity of the town are so much the 
more worthy of praise, that the sight is not offended, as in our coun- 
try, by the details of these sanitary operations. One might imagine 
that the city was superintended by invisible GEdiles 3 . " 

"On the whole, London is an immense metropolis, worthy of 
being seen. It is the capital of a mighty empire; the first com- 
mercial city in the universe; the centre of activity, labour, and 
riches : the Ocean is covered with her ships, and her merchants are 
the most intelligent in the world. The treasures of the two worlds 
are poured into her bosom. It is for her that China cultivates her 
tea ; America her cotton-plant and sugar-cane ; and Europe the whole 
of her productions. She spreads over the world these raw mate- 
rials brought to perfection by her labour. The aspect of London 
is therefore essentially industrial and commercial; she is the co- 
lossus of commerce, and the Queen of the Ocean V" 

London has been accused of tolerating evils which are, however, 
common to all capitals. The multitude of her poor, her thieves, 
and prostitutes, has been deplored. But, besides that these three 
classes exist in a fearful proportion in cities where the population 
is far from amounting to two millions, it must be observed that their 
presence in London is easily accounted for by the commercial, in- 
dustrial, and maritime character of this city. W e do not attach any 
weight to the fact that there are numbers of foreigners here, as the 
same observation might be made with regard to Paris ; but we cannot 
refrain from noticing a class of persons who, although not strangers 
to the British Isles, are however to England itself, and who in 
particular do not belong to the religious creed which we have 
now T to consider : we mean those numerous Irish Catholics, who, 
bringing into London a fearful mass of vice of all descriptions, give 
a false idea of the state of the English and Protestant majority. 

It is a fact, that the Irish Catholic population in London is not 
equally distributed in all classes of society; since it is nearly 
exclusively confined to the manufactories, the streets, the brothels, 
and the prisons. 



1. D'Haussez, p. 10. — 2. Idem, p. H. — 3. Idem, p. 81. — 4. Dory, pp. 17, 18. 



75 



A parliamentary report, quoted by the Revue Britannique \ 
states that a third of the beggars in London are Irish. Speaking 
of the infamous haunts, into which the police has not yet dared to 
penetrate, M. Leon Faucher gives them the name of Little Ireland, 
As to the prostitutes, the Revue Britannique affirms, in the same 
page, that the fourth part consist of Irishwomen 2 . " 

This superabundance of Irish occurs also in the great manufac- 
turing districts of the other counties of England : ' c Thus, in Lanca- 
shire, while the number of Scotch, although they are near neighbours, 
only amounts to 21,000, there are 105,000 Irish, crowded together, 
notwithstanding they are forced to cross the sea in order to arrive 
there. In Manchester and Liverpool , the Irish Catholics are always 
in a majority in the most immoral and miserable quarters of these 
cities. Some years ago, the most wretched part of the population of 
Manchester consisted of Irish. Their dwellings Were the dirtiest 
and most unhealthy, and their children the most neglected. It was 
in their cellars that spirits of the worst kind were fraudulently dis- 
tilled* and misery, fever, drunkenness, debauchery, and theft per- 
petually prevailed there. These cellars were the favourite resort of 
vagabonds and criminals; and not a day passed but some fray arose, 
or some crime left its stain of blood in these horrible places 3 . " 

The same author affords unconsciously, as striking, proof of the 
truth of our assertion, that Catholic Ireland throws a mass of corrup- 
tion among the Protestants of London, and thus gives a faise idea 
of the entire population, which is considered as Protestant. He is 
speaking of a quarter called Whitechapel, one of the most miserable 
in the capital. According to M. Leon Faucher, it is inhabited by 
three different classes : 1 st , the Jews; 2 d 'y, the Irish; and 3 d 'y, by the 
descendants of the French Protestant ref u gees . Setting aside the Jews, 
who are here out of the question, there remain the Irish Catholics 
and the French Protestants, in presence of each other. M. Leon 
Faucher has just given the most gloomy description of this quarter. 
But he makes an exception ; in favour of whom? Precisely in favour 
of these Protestants ! He says : ' c This colony is composed of nearly 
150,000 souls, formed by the successive arrivals of French artisans 
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; afterwards by Irish la- 
bourers; and, lastly, by the Jews. The descendants of the French 

1. Revue Britannique, 1845, vol. ii, p. 181. — 2. M. Leon Faucher thus speaks of them : 
" The number of prostitutes is not necessarily a proof of the immorality of a people. The 
populations of Southern Europe, who have few or no prostitutes, are precisely those who are 
notorious for the dissoluteness of their manners. The extent of prostitution is in proportion 
to the greatness of the luxury and the depth of misery. All things considered, prostitution 
must he more common in London than Paris, because there are fewer means in that city of 
procuring employment." (Vol. i, p. 78.) — 3. Leon Faucher, vol. I, p. 326. 



70 



artisans are a more cultivated race, who show great dislike for the 
Irish, an ignorant and drunken set, who in their turn regard with 
profound contempt, from religious motives, the children of Israel. 
It is these naturalised Frenchmen that have taught the English 
to weave silk, etc. These weavers may he called the moral aristo- 
cracy of the place. Their probity has hecome proverbial, and pre- 
sents a favourable contrast to the degradation of their neighbours, 
although the love of spirituous liquors has made some inroads among 
them . They have the tastes which belong to intelligent beings ; they 
are great readers of newspapers, cultivate flowers, and meet together 
in the evenings in clubs, where they receive lessons of arithmetic, 
geography, history, and drawing 4 . " 

In order to give an exact idea of the share that belongs to the 
Irish in the corruption of London, we cannot do better than quote 
an author who has studied them on the spot : " It is not without 
a sentiment of fear that a visitor penetrates into the narrow and 
dark lane called Bainbridge (the Irish quarter in London). 
Before he has advanced ten steps, he is almost suffocated by the 
mephitic odour, and finds the lane so filled with coal that it is im- 
practicable. Turning to the right, I entered another muddy lane, 
full of holes filled with soap-suds, dish-water, and worse still. I was 
obliged to rouse all my courage in order to overcome my disgust 
and continue my walk through all this filth and mire. In St Giles's, 
one feels suffocated by the smells; there is neither air to breathe, 
nor sufficient light to see one's way. This wretched population wash 
their rags themselves, and hang them upon cords stretched across 
the lanes, and thus completely intercept all air and sunshine. The 
filth under one's feet sends forth a poisonous stench, and the rags 
overhead are dripping with filth. The wildest dreams of imagi- 
nation cannot equal the horror of this frightful reality. When 
I had arrived at the end of the street, which was not very long, I 
found my resolution fail. My physical strength is far inferior to 
my moral courage ; I felt a sickness, and acute pains shot through 
my temples. I hesitated whether I should pursue my way through 
the Irish quarter, when I recollected on a sudden that I was in the 
midst of my fellow creatures, of my brethren, who had been suffer- 
ing in silence for ages the agony which had nearly overcome my 
weakness, although I had not borne it more than ten minutes. I 
conquered my repugnance, and examined minutely this mass of 
suffering. It was then that an undefinable feeling of compassion 



1. Leon Fiuiclier, vol. t, pp. 12 and 13. 



77 



filled my heart, and at the same time a gloomy sentiment of terror 
took possession of my mind. 

" Imagine men, women, and children walking barefoot in this 
horrible filth; some leaning against the walls for want of seats, 
others crouched on the ground, and children rolling in the mud, 
like swine. It is impossible, without witnessing it, to imagine such 
hideous misery, such profound debasement, such complete degrada- 
tion in human beings? There I beheld children completely naked, 
young girls, women with children at the breast barefoot, and with 
nothing on but a chemise in tatters, showing nearly the whole of 
their naked bodies, old men squatting in a little filthy straw, and 
young men covered with rags. The interior and exterior of these 
miserable hovels correspond with the tattered garments of the 
inhabitants. The greater part of these dwellings have no windows, 
and the doors no fastenings; they are rarely paved, and all they 
contain is an old clumsy oaken table, a wooden bench, some 
pewter ladles ; a hole, in which father, mother, sons, daughters, 
and friends sleep all together : such are the comforts of the 
Irish quarter. All this is horrible; and yet it is trifling in com- 
parison with the expression of their countenances. All are 
frightfully thin, wan, unhealthy, and covered with sores on 
their faces, necks, and hands. Their skins are so dirty, and their 
hair so matted, that they look like negroes. Their hollow eyes reveal 
a stupid ferocity; but if you look sternly at these wretched beings, 
they assume a cringing, supplicating air. I recognised here the 
same kind, of expression that I had remarked in the prisons. It 
must be a joyful day for them when they enter Cold-Bath Fields. 
At least, in that prison, they have clean linen, comfortable clothing, 
clean beds, and pure air ! How do this population gain their live- 
lihood? By prostitution and theft. As soon as the boys are nine 
or ten years old, they are sent to steal; at eleven or twelve years 
of age, the girls are sold to houses of ill-fame. All, men and women, 
make a trade of thieving : the old people beg. If I had seen this 
quarter before I visited Newgate, i should have felt no surprise on 
being informed that this prison receives fifty or sixty children 
every month, and as many women of the town V 

]f we were to sum up all that has been said on the question of the 
influence of foreigners in London, we might say that the evil, which 
is an exception, is caused by Catholicism; while the good, which is 
the rule, proceeds from Protestantism. But we will not form our 



1. Tiistan, pp. 214 to 217. 



78 



opinion of all the towns from a survey of the capital ; we are the 
less inclined to do so that the real people exist mostly out of the 
metropolis. Let us then take a cursory view of some other cities. 

" The persevering industry of the inhabitants of Lancashire has 
made of this country, the soil of which is sterile, the climate unfa- 
vourable, and the winds cold, one of the most prosperous in Great 
Britain. The land being too spungy, rotted the seed ; they dug it up 
to give it air, and by so doing discovered the rich coal mines which 
now supply all the neighbouring manufactories. The navigation 
of the rivers was often impeded by the moving sands, which exist 
all along their beds ; quagmires rendered the roads impracticable 
during eight months of the year ; the inhabitants of Lancashire were 
the first to substitute canals for these tiresome modes of communi- 
cation ; as later they were the first to adopt the use of railroads. 
There is not a single useful improvement or discovery that has not 
been immediately put into pratice, or had its origin, in Lancashire K" 

"In 1825, commercial enterprise had become so active in England, 
the manufactories being so numerous, the slow mode of communi- 
cation by canals ill satisfied the feverish impatience of speculation, 
and on all sides endeavours were made to find a remedy for this 
radical defect. Fifteen hours to go from Liverpool to Manchester 
appeared as monstrous to the merchants of the present day as the 
eleven days which, in 4720, tried the patience of their forefathers. 
It was then proposed to apply to outward circulation the system of 
rails that was used in the mines. In a few months, shares to the 
amount of 400,000 /. were taken ; the road was opened in 1 828, and 
the distance which divides Liverpool from Manchester was travel- 
led over, by goods, in two hours and a half, and by passengers in 
one hour and twenty minutes ! What rejoicing ! what a triumph ! 
what success for this busy population who reckon their existence by 
seconds, and who are constantly repeating: c Time is money!" 
The result of this enterprise produced during the first year 40,000/. 
profit, and on the 31 st of December this sum had increased in two 
years to 85,529/. And yet how many difficulties had to be conquer- 
ed ! Valleys to be filled up, hills to be cut through, tunnels to be 
dug under the towns. All these obstacles were overcome, and in less 
than four years 800,000/. were absorbed in this gigantic enterprise. 
The number of travellers conveyed daily, by twenty-six carriages, 
amounted at first to 400; then to 1,200; afterwards to 1,500; and it 
has now increased fourfold. The fare between Manchester and 



1 Saint-Germain Leduc, vol. in, pp. 251, 252. 



70 



Liverpool, which was half a guinea on the outside, is now, by rail- 
way, only five shillings. 

" Manchester, with its environs, for eight or ten leagues round, 
forms as it were hut one vast workshop. 

" Liverpool has no manufactories, but sells the productions of 
the neighbouring towns : it is a mart, nothing but a mart, but the 
most convenient mart in the universe. All business is transacted 
in a space smaller than the Place du Carrousel, which contains the 
Exchange, the Mayoralty, and the Counting Houses. At four or five 
o'clock, business is at an end for the day : every one shuts his office, 
and returns to his town or country house. To give an idea of the 
enormous amount of business transacted in this narrow space, it 
will suffice to say that lately land was sold there at the rate of 
A001. for six square feet. I do not believe that land in any quarter 
of Paris ever fetched half the price. 

" Liverpool is the headquarter of the English steamboats ; eleven 
thousand vessels enter her docks yearly. For the last ten years, the 
exportations of the United Kingdom have amounted regularly to 
more than 360,000/.; two-fifths of these exportations are sent 
from Liverpool; a fifth of the British customs' dues is levied there, 
that is to say, the sum of four millions of pounds 1 . " 

Amidst this whirl of industry of commerce, the inhabitants of 
Liverpool do not forget that above all things they are religious and 
moral beings. M. Leon Faucher says : Religion has always been 
found to be the only principle that can elevate rude natures. At every 
step in the streets of Liverpool you meet with some edifice conse- 
crated to public worship (157 churches or chapels). There is even 
one in the middle of the docks, where an old hulk serves as a float- 
ing chapel, for the use of the sailors. The corporation have built 
five churches, which cost them 3,200/. a-year to keep in repair. 
This has been done, not to ornament the city, as in Paris, but 
from a principle of devotion 2 . " 

" At Newcastle, to the beauties of nature have been added the 
wonders of persevering industry. The country is peopled entirely 
with artisans, and crossed by railroads in every direction ; files of 
waggons may be seen slowly advancing, drawn by a single horse, or 
rolling impelled by their own weight from the summi ts of hills. A 
prodigious activity reigns everywhere, and yet the most interesting 
part of the country is concealed beneath the soil . The subterranean 
works of those coal mines, which furnish the greater part of the 



1. Saint-Germain Leduc, vol. Hi, pp. 267 to 272* — 2. Leon Faucher, vol. l, p. 240. 



80 



fuel of Great Britain The Newcastle mines are very extensive. 
These subterranean towns and farms deserve a visit from the 
curious traveller, as much as those on the surface of the earth. At 
three or four hundred feet under ground, there are streets as regu- 
lar as those of the best quarters of London. The miners have all a 
contented look : they enjoy good health, because care is taken to 
supply them with the proper quantity of air, and frequently renew- 
ed 2 . The minds of the citizens of Newcastle are not entirely 
engrossed by mercantile transactions ; they have a great taste for 
literary pursuits, and have prepossessing manners 3 . " 

But why should we confine our examination to the towns and 
fields? Let us penetrate into the domestic circle, and follow the 
English into those places where they delight to live alone among 
themselves. Let us study this family sanctuary, to which they 
alone have given a name, and for which in France we are obliged 
to use a periphrase, as if we were strangers to the thing : the home 
of England, and the chez-soi of the France. Let our authors 
speak for themselves : ''Home for the English is the centre of 
their entire existence; it is the stronghold of their fortune, their 
family, and their liberty v . The houses have an air of coquetry : 
everything is painted, varnished, cleaned, polished, like a mirror. 
Even on the outside the paint is fresh, and the brass clean. The 
threshold of the doors, the very pavement, is washed with soap : the 
floor of the rooms, even in the houses of people of small fortunes, 
is covered with carpet, as well as the staircase. There are not 
several families huddled together, as in France, in the same house : 
each family has its own separate dwelling... The English attach 
so much importance to cleanliness in person and dress, that it 
is for them the virtue of the body 5 ." "The family circle is a 
great source of happiness to the English; it is their pastime and en- 
joyment 6 . " 

" Nowhere can be seen such faithful protection on one side, and 
such tender and pious devotedness on the other, as in married life 
in England. Nowhere do the wives share with so much courage 
and simplicity the troubles and dangers of their husbands, wherever 
the duties of their profession may call them 7 ." " All things con- 
sidered, ceteris paribus, thanks to the influence of the manners, 
the married state in England is happier than in any other coun- 
try 8 . " " If the attachment of the wife is more durable, the reason 

1. Saint-Germain Leduc, vol. in, p. 309. — 2. Pichot, vol. iv, p. 150. — 3. Idem, p. 152. — 
4. Don , p. 22. — 5 Idem, p. 15. — 6. Solitaire, vol. u, p, 10. — 7. Madame de Stael, p. 108. 
— 8. FHaussez, p. 56. 



81 



is that the husbands are more faithful ; and that the conjugal tie is 
less an affair of interest than the union of two minds and two 
hearts, destined for each other. The young girls, before their 
marriage, are free; they speak and feel freely, and are not concealed 
by a veil of silence or hypocrisy, as in certain countries 1 . " " The 
Englishwomen are grave and serious; their minds are less occupied 
with amusements, than with their husbands and their domestic 
cares. Even women of quality nurse their children. Amidst all 
the corruption of London, a married woman rarely commits a fault . 
Her love for her family, her household cares, and her natural reserve, 
form an insurmountable barrier against the temptations of vice. I 
will even maintain that there is not a city in the world where the 
husband's honour is in less danger than in London V (i The 
independence of the Englishwomen before marriage is exchanged 
afterwards for a submission and a reserve which are most exem- 
plary. These two facts are the rigorous consequences of each 
other ; it is because young persons are allowed to j udge and choose for 
themselves that the marriage tie is strong and durable ; for the same 
reason it is respected, and its rupture is branded with infamy. In 
France, a separation entails no disgrace. Amongst unions so hastily 
formed, it is impossible that some should not be found insupport- 
able 3 . On the whole, the Englishwomen ought to be classed 
among the most remarkable in Europe. To all that constitutes 
beauty, they add that which gives it its value : devotedness to their 
duties, varied instruction, and elegant minds; a combination, in 
short, of all the qualities which constitute the happiness of families 
and the charm of society " 

ei It must be allowed that the Reformed faith is particularly 
favourable to family affection ! The Protestant worship is indeed 
family worship, that of the domestic hearth; inasmuch as the 
family circle is its best sanctuary. What is the basis of Protest- 
antism? The Bible. Between the Bible and the Protestant there 
is no medium, no forced interpreter; in consequence, every Protest- 
ant Christian, provided he can read, is for himself, as well as for 
those who listen to him, a priest, a minister of God. To read the 
Bible is the all-important act of the Protestant religion; on the 
other hand, this act is in itself perfectly simple, the simplest 
in private life ; and yet there is something solemn about it ; but a 
sweet solemnity, which has nothing fearful or mysterious, like a 
Catholic mass. I had the pleasure of being present several times 

1. Dory, p. 22. — 2. Archennolz, vol. ii, p. 156. — 3. Hennequin, p. 138. — 4. D'Haussez, 
vol. i, p. 103. 

T. II. 6 



N2 

at this reading of the Bible, in the house of an honest old farmer 
in Northamptonshire, who had taken a fancy to me. In the evening, 
when all the doors were closed, the family took their places round 
the hearth, wmere burned an excellent coal fire. The farmer then 
rose, and with slow steps went to a cupboard, which he opened, 
and took from it a large quarto volume, which was the family 
Bible. A family Bible is an object with which so many recol- 
lections and ideas are connected, that it might be chosen as the 
title of a work, which would be a treatise of religion, morality, 
Christian philosophy, history, etc . The old farmer placed the book 
on his knees, and immediately every one took up some work already 
begun; the women their needlework, and the boys their instru- 
ments for making nets. It may be remarked, perhaps, that the 
reading was the signal for work; this habit appeared to me the 
result of real religious feeling. The worship of the Bible is thus 
associated with all the occupations of life, even the most humble, 
which it ennobles and endears. To participate in public worship, in 
a worship that requires many preparations and ceremonies, it is ne- 
cessary to bid adieu to our ordinary occupations. Thus, religion 
awaits us in a higher sphere, whither we must ascend to it, and where 
we leave it on returning to our ordinary affairs; and it is for this 
reason we never become better ; only more or less devout I. " 

u As soon as the Lord's Day arrives, all Great Britain becomes 
silent and serious. Every one goes to church; all bustle ceases, 
and nothing is heard, except at long intervals the sound of bells, 
or the chant of a small group of Methodists, repeating in chorus 
the hymn of some preacher in the open air. A pious or curious 
crowd surround him; some listen attentively, and sing with heart- 
felt devotion ; others look on in silence ; but no one thinks of inter- 
rupting or criticising this extemporary service, which is termi- 
nated by a short exhortation to the love of God and our neighbour, 
and also by a collection for poor co-religionists 2 . " 

Religion among the English Protestants is not merely, as else- 
where, and among others, a Sunday religion; it is a religion which 
pervades one's whole existence, regulates morals, and the influence 
of which is everywhere felt. This is not our own assertion ; we 
quote the Catholic newspaper, La Voix de la Verite, in 1853. These 
are the very words : " In England, " says M. Etienne, (i the respect 
for religion is so general, that Strauss was translated three times, 
and neither time could a printer be obtained for the work. A 



1. Vieil-Castel, pp. 101 to 106. —2. Simon, vol. if, pp. 50, Si. 



83 



gentleman having broken the windows of a bookseller's shop, in 
which some blasphemous prints were exposed for sale, the jury 
acquitted him. A bookseller told me that all the irreligious 
books he had published had only proved so many losses, and 
that he continued to publish them merely from a spite against 
some persons who persecuted him and threatened him with impri- 
sonment. In all private houses, on board steamers, even in 
hotels, you find the Holy Scriptures ; grace is always said at private 
and public dinners; religion is never mentioned but with respect; 
and on Sunday every one goes to his own place of worship. The 
statesmen, with Wilberforce at their head, actuated by religious 
motives, in spite of long opposition, succeeded in emancipating 
the American negroes, which emancipation was joyfully hailed by 
the Church. Men of science endeavour to trace in their disco- 
veries proofs of the greatness and goodness of God; the middle 
classes, and even the poor, give enormous sums to the Missions 
and to charitable institutions. If any one wishes to be well received 
in society, he must beware of wounding the general feeling of re- 
spect for religion; or of showing indifference towards things 
worthy of praise; such as the domestic virtues, the pious observance 
of Sunday, sincerity, philanthropy, or good faith. * 

From domestic manners, let us pass to those of public life, casting 
a glance at each class of society : 

" As every Englishman, ?3 says M. Leon Faucher, " who is not 
obliged to work in order to gain his livelihood wishes to be thought 
a gentleman, he is always on his guard either to conquer or con- 
ceal his defects; for an impropriety in English society excites 
more indignation than a cringe in Italy or Spain. But what I 
admire chiefly in these habits is the security which they create 
in public and private life. A man of any station or birth never 
tells a falsehood ; he would tarnish his reputation by employing 
artitice or dissimulation. Hence arises the universal confidence 
which simplifies all social intercourse : in England, everything 
is transacted verbally as effectually as in France by writing K " 

" The French traveller is much surprised, when he visits the 
manufactories of Great Britain, at seeing the civility of the work- 
men to whom he happens to speak, and their polite and obliging, 
but not servile, manners, their respect for their master, and all 
who appear to belong to a higher class than themselves. They 
evidently respect, the hierarchy of society. Englishmen, in gene- 



i. Leon Faucher, vol. n, p. 409. 



84 



ral, know how to command and to obey. Bat, in the latter case, 
their obedience is rational; they submit to authority, but on condi- 
tion that the authority is just. They will readily admit that you 
are a gentleman, and speak to you respectfully in consequence ; 
but your manners must correspond with your pretensions , other- 
wise they wili detect you with exquisite tact, and find means to 
make you feel that if you have the dress of a gentleman, you have 
neither the bearing nor the language of one. 1 was always sur- 
prised at the correct and proper manner in which the English 
workmen express themselves. In the manufactories, every work- 
man speaks without embarrassment, obligingly shows the different 
operations of his trade, and always makes use of the proper terms, 
instead of those trivial expressions which disfigure so universally 
in France the language of the lower classes. 

" The English workmen have often been taxed with a sordid 
spirit : it is a calumny. Not only an English workman never asked 
me for what is so common among us, something to drink, but on 
the contrary I have always found much difficulty in persuading 
men, who had been showing me over the workrooms for hours to- 
gether, to accept half a crown, or a crown. Several times even I 
completely failed *. " 

" To the honour of the English manufacturers I hasten to say 
that in a great number of the manufactories in Lancashire, Che- 
shire, Derbyshire, and in Scotland, great pains have been taken 
to render the workrooms clean, airy, and almost elegant, to the 
great advantage of masters and men. In the same establishments 
severe regulations prevent all immorality and profligate language; 
there are schools for the children, where the young girls learn 
to sew and knit; libraries for the use of the workmen; rewards 
given to the children who attend the Sunday schools; and benefit 
societies have been founded in case of sickness or accident 2 . The 
word emancipation is written on the standards of France and 
England; yet in France the middle classes have swallowed up the 
nobility. In England, the nobility and commoners advance side 
by side without jostling each other, and this alliance is to us a 
mystery 3 . " 

" In this country of political liberty no one is shocked at the 
difference of rank. That feeling of jealousy which, before the first 
Revolution, animated the middle classes and the people against 
the counts, marquises, and barons, is scarcely known here; a feeling 

1. Simon, vol. n, pp. 41 to 43. — 2. Saint-Germain Leduc, vol. in , p. 290. — 3. Jdcm* 
p. 58. 



8;; 

of pure vanity, which explains one of the highest gratifications 
enjoyed in our country, that of humbling the nobility... In 
England, no one dislikes a duke because he is a duke, or a marquis 
because he is a marquis. Is it because an English nobleman 
always shows a calm dignity in his pride, while the haughtiness 
of the French nobleman always more resembles that affected and 
provoking foppery which Moliere was allowed to turn into ridicule 
for the amusement of the court and city under Louis 14 th ? 1 " 

" It is sufficient to examine the list of the House of Lords to be 
convinced that no class of men can surpass, or even equal, the 
English aristocracy in learning, talents, or virtues. The reason 
is, that this aristocracy, instead of being exclusive, as on the conti- 
nent, is always accessible to all who show themselves worthy of 
entering its ranks. We must not imagine that privileges, like the 
satyr in the fable, can blow hot and cold with the same breath ; 
and make simpletons in Austria or Spain, and distinguished men in 
England V 

" Let one of the great lords commit a slight to the man who at 
first accosted him with the lowliest respect; in an instant you will 
see a blunt haughtiness replace the respect which is granted to 
rank, but refused to arrogance. The sentiment of justice is so 
deeply engrafted in every English heart, that every human consi- 
deration disappears as soon as the principles of liberty or social 
dignity receive the slightest injury. And in this country, so highly 
monarchical , even the splendour of royalty would not cover the 
smallest violation of what the citizens regard as their common 
right 3 . " " The English aristocracy are the instruments of great 
things; and are constantly occupied in preparing themselves for 
such. One might almost define them an immensefschool of govern- 
ment. The heirs of this haughty nobility are to be found in the 
army and navy, the diplomacy, the colonial governments, and the 
House of Commons *. " 

Next to these characteristics, which are peculiar to different 
classes of society, it is well to place those that distinguish the 
English in general. You may always recognise the same type, 
whether he be an accomplished gentleman, an honest workman, a 
kind master, or a well-informed and unaffected nobleman; he never 
acts a part, he is always himself. " In England/' says Dr. Dory, 
" the individuality of every man is much more developed than in 
France. Every one shows himself with his true character, his 



1. Revue Britannique, 1845, vol. IV, p. 212. — 2. Madame de Stael, pp. 118, 119. — 3. Idem., 

p. 168. — 4. Leon Faucher, vol. u, p. 394, 



86 



virtues, or his vices; there is no uniform varnish, as with us, 
which makes all people resemble each other. The individual stands 
as it were alone, and thereby acquires greater strength; domestic life 
is more highly prized, and every one's conscience is the guardian 
of his faith. It cannot be denied that the individual becomes of 
more importance from this continual exercise of his strength and 
faculties l " " When a foreigner arrives in England, nothing strikes 
him so much as the all-pervading spirit of regularity, order, and 
cleanliness, and the composed and grave aspect that everything 
wears, betokening precious qualities, which seem to preside over 
all transactions connected with their gigantic enterprises. This 
public decorum, this honesty of all the commercial classes, taken 
collectively, presents an appearance that commands respect. Indi- 
vidual probity is a fundamental quality of the English character. 
The simple phrase, J have given my word, contains everything; it is 
as grave and as full of meaning in the mouth of an Englishwoman 
about to be married as in that of an Englishman in business : it 
is the basis of moral security in private life, as well as of confidence 
in public and commercial life 2 . " 

" If we now consider the national qualities of the English, we 
shall tind that they are eminently generous, not only individually, 
but also as a nation, in the moral signification of the term. They 
nobly assist the persecuted and destitute, wherever they meet 
them. This disposition shows itself in the mass of the people, 
and is their peculiar characteristic : one might almost think that 
this beneficent disposition has its source in a noble feeling of na- 
tional pride 3 . " 

Study this character, even in its errors under the influence of 
passion ; and if you will in its resistance to authority, when impel- 
led to such resistance by a sense of wrong : " With what profound 
reflection, " says M. d'Haussez, <£ the English people act, even while 
apparently in a whirlwind of passion. How quickly they recover 
from the emotions which they could not repress ! How soon they 
become calm ! How carefully they examine the ground on which 
they are treading, when they are obliged to advance ! The reason 
is, that good sense forms the basis of their character ; and that, for 
nations as well as individuals, this precious gift is essential to hap- 
piness 4 . h 

The government, too, in its turn, knows how to yield to good 
sense, instead of rejecting its claims by violence: "George III/' 



1. Dory, p. 54. — 2. Solitaire, vol. n, pp. 12, 13. —3. Idem, p. 44. — 4. D'Haussez, 
VOl. II, p. 232. 



81 



says Madame de Stael, " one day gave orders to close a gate and 
footway in his own park at Richmond, which had been open to the 
public for many years. A citizen of Richmond, who found this 
path convenient for himself and the other inhabitants of the town, 
undertook to defend his own and his neighbours' cause. He main- 
tained that even if the passage had been an abuse at the beginning, 
it had become, by the lapse of time, part of the public way ; that the 
right was established, and that he would force the king to reopen 
the gate. Without hesitation, he brought the affair before a court 
of justice, and gained his suit. If a governor of the Tuileries or the 
Louvre took a fancy to close any walks or passages which the public 
had always enjoyed, how many citizens of Paris would lodge a 
complaint, and how many judges could be found to decide in their 
favour? 

"I saw in London a carriage belonging to a member of the 
Royal Family seized by his creditors just as he was going to enter 
it to go to Court. His creditors were very obedient subjects, and 
men who had as much respect as others for the privileges of rank; 
but they were also English citizens, who knew their rights, and 
were determined to enforce them ! . " 

We have taken, a survey of town and country, and studied the 
English character in private and public life ; now let us examine the 
manufactories and marts, and review the industry and commerce 
of England : 

"In Great Britain, " says M. Leon Faucher, "where commerce 
has in general so much grandeur, tradesmen sell at fixed prices, 
and the most stupendous affairs are transacted without circumlo- 
cution, duplicity, or loss of time, by yes and no 2 . " 

" The commerce of England is an immense machine, which 
is worked by 800,000 merchants or tradesmen, 6,000,000 work- 
men, 200,000 sailors, and 20,000 vessels, which convey and throw 
into circulation 12,000 millions of pounds' weight of goods. 

" This commerce produces 120,000,000^. annually, which serve 
to pay the workmen and mariners, leaving immense profits, which 
it is impossible to estimate, and to defray the cost of building 
1250 ships yearly, and maintaining a fleet of 560 vessels 3 . The 
spirit of English trade is, in general, very different from that of 
the French ; and unhappily, in this respect, the advantage is not 
on our side. There reigns in general among the English, at 
home and abroad, in wholesale and retail transactions, a good 

1. Madame de Stael, pp. 168 to 170. — 2. Leon Faucher, vol. n, p. 54. — 3. Nougarede, 

VOl. I, p. 4. 



88 



faith, a punctuality, a frankness, which unfortunately does not 
exist among us 1 . " 

u The only expressions that can characterise the commercial trans- 
actions of England are 'immense', 'universal/ There does not 
exist a port or creek in any known sea into which her vessels 
do not penetrate; not a production but becomes in her hands a 
means of exchange. From this has resulted an unexampled state 
of prosperity. With settlements on every coast ; sovereigns for 
clerks ; colonies composed of states more populous than the mo- 
ther country, and for markets states kept by treaties in a state of 
complete dependence on England; and, lastly, an industry that 
supplies all these wants, and even exceeds them : such are the 
general foundations on which rest the commercial operations of 
England 2 . In its present state, the commerce of England is 
one of the greatest wonders of a civilisation carried to the highest 
pitch that it can possibly attain. Its establishments on sea and 
land, the importance of its transactions, the number of hands it 
employs, the activity given to capital, the discoveries to which it 
gives rise in every branch of human knowledge, its results ; in 
short, in whatever point of view we consider them, are above 
everything that has ever existed of the kind. And even should it 
be ever reduced to less gigantic proportions, the remembrance of 
what it was would remain in the memory of nations, and its 
efforts and success must ever be classed amongt the most powerful 
levers that ever served to create a revolution in the ideas and 
material condition of society. 

"Industry keeps pace with commerce. In no other country 
has it been so fully developed, or attained such prosperity. It is 
nowhere more skilful in its operations, or more successful in its 
results. There is no want which it cannot readily supply ; it can 
mould itself to any form, and be applied to any use. It is impos- 
sible to extol too highly the progress of this industry. The most 
extraordinary of its creations, however, are not its productions, 
admirable as they are, but the means it employs, the simplicity, 
and at the same time the power of jits ingenious, we might almost 
say intelligent, machinery, which possess by their construction all 
the address with which Providence has gifted human fingers, all 
the strength that resides in his muscles, without any of the 
awkwardness, unwillingness, or false judgment, which accompa- 
nies the exercise of his faculties, and renders them imperfect. It 



1. Nougarede, vol. 11, p. 115. —2. D'Haussez, vol. i, pp. 327, 328. 



89 



is this union of capital and of talent that forms a power unknown 
to the ancients, and which nothing can resist in modern times. 

" The spirit of association is stronger in England than any- 
where else; nothing escapes its grasp. In Asia, a mercantile 
company has by conquest formed immense colonies, protected them 
by armies, and treated the native sovereigns as inferiors. In 
Europe this spirit has formed extensive establishments, ports, 
docks, and arsenals, and crushes all individual competition i . " 

"No country/' saysBalbi, "possesses such numerous and splendid 
canals. These gigantic works have been undertaken and executed 
by private individuals, without any help whatever from the 
government 2 . " 

" We must not omit another mode of communication in which 
England surpasses all other nations; we mean the numberless 
railroads that traverse the country in all directions, and which 
were the first executed in Europe 3 . " " Nearly all the manufacto- 
ries and their productions have been carried to the highest per- 
fection, and Great Britain may now be regarded as the most 
industrious country in the world. Nearly all her cities are re- 
markable for some particular branch of industry. All that 
history has recorded of the riches and commerce of the nations 
that have been most celebrated in these respects, during the 
middle ages and in modern times, dwindles into insignificance 
when compared with those of Great Britain. While her home 
trade is probably the richest and the most active in the world, she 
draws from foreign countries a mass of raw materials to supply 
her innumerable manufactories, and distributes the excess of her 
home consumption and the productions of her industry to all the 
nations of the globe, covering all the seas with her trading vessels, 
and ruling them all by her invincible fleets and by her colonies, 
the situation of which has been chosen with admirable skill. 
Great Britain has raised herself to such a pitch of power and 
splendour, that her commercial activity extends even farther 
than her vast political dominion ; in fact, her commerce knows 
no other bounds than those of the habitable globe \ " 

We shall now merely add a few lines more on the extent of 
the industry and commerce of England : " The number of per- 
sons occupied in the cotton manufactories is estimated at 1,200,000. 
More than 700,000 workmen are employed in the silk manufac- 
tures of Great Britain ; 500,000 persons find work and subsistence 

1. D'HauSSCZ, vol. I, pp. 331 to 335. — 2. Balbi, p. 472. — 3. Idem, p. 474. — 4. Idem, 
p. 478, 479. 



90 



in the woollen manufactories, and more than 300,000 in the linen 

manufactories 1 .-" 

u The annual production of the cotton manufactories in England 
exceeds the prodigious sum of a million j a sum equal to the entire 
revenue of the extensive Empire of China. Such is the prodigious 
result of the union of the capital and machinery, the force of which 
in the United Kingdom equals that of 80 millions of men. The 
most indifferent observer would feel astonishment at seeing in 
Glasgow, Manchester, Paisley, etc., the effects of the genius and 
skill of man. And it is not only in great cities, but in the deepest 
caverns, on the summit of the loftiest hills, and even in the most 
remote corners of the country, that may be seen everywhere the 
admirable results of the use of machinery 2 . ■■ 

et The silks manufactured in Great Britain and exported yearly, 
from 1821 to 1831, have amounted : in 1821, to 136,841/. ; in 1824, 
to 159,670/. | in 1827, to 173,593/.; in 1830, to 427,849/.; and 
in 1831, to 500,000/. 3 " 

We do not pretend to treat the question of the commerce and 
industry of England as a statistician, but merely to collect some 
testimonies as to their extent and morality. We could make an 
almost interminable list of these witnesses, but to avoid repetition 
we shall close the subject with one more quotation : " Thanks to 
the wise reserve of government, the efforts of English industry are 
out of all proportion with what is done elsewhere. For commerce, 
liberty and encouragement are synonymous. Thus trade and ma- 
nufactures have attained gigantic proportions in England. One 
feels as if in a country inhabited by beings greater than men. 
Intelligent machines grasp weights and enormous masses with a 
facility, I may say a skill, that is fearful... I have seen galleries 
half a quarter of a league in length, merely destined to stow away 
innumerable hogsheads of sugar, until they could be placed in the 
adjoining warehouses. Under these depots they have dug out 
subterraneous cities. I wish 1 could describe the activity of the 
diminutive beings who bustle about like ants around these instru- 
ments created by their genius. 1 so completely exhausted myself 
in contemplating this spectacle, that I have not strength to say 
more upon it. All that is most astonishing in industry in this 
country can be dated only thirty years back : after stating this 
fact; judge if it is possible to form an adequate idea of the conti- 
nually increasing riches of England *. " 



1. Pebver, vol. II, p. 39, — 2. Hem, p. 40. — 3. Idem, p. 48. — 4. CllStine, vol. IIT, p. 141. 



Now, let us say a few words of the colonies. In 1717, Canada, 
after having heen during two hundred and sixteen years in pos- 
session of the French, had a population which only amounted, 
according to the Memoirs of Chartrain, to 27,000 souls. Twenty 
years after its conquest hy the English, in 1783, it had increased 
to 113,000. The princes, dukes, and marquises who had succeeded 
each other, during two centuries and a half, in the government 
of Canada had done little or nothing for the improvement and 
prosperity of the colony. 

Now, 'let us see the state of this population under abetter govern- 
ment : "In J 790, the Canadians were put in possession, by act of 
parliament, of the commercial advantages and liberal institutions 
which are the basis of their present prosperity. Since that time, 
the colony has progressed rapidly, and increased greatly in im- 
portance The prosperity of Canada advances at a rate that sur- 
passes all expectations; her population, which now amounts to more 
than a million, has doubled since 1811, and the quantity of land 
brought into cultivation is trebled. Her commerce has increased in 
an equal proportion; the mercantile navy has, on an average, 
transported more than 400,000 tons during the last three years, 
and employed 21,000 sailors. The consumption of manufactured 
products has surpassed 2 millions annually, and the exportation of 
the productions of the colony has not been less. The public prospe- 
rity has greatly increased ; all the public works have been execut- 
ed on a magnificent scale, and at a vast expense. The fortifica- 
tions of Canada will cost nearly three millions : considerable sums 
have also been expended on the roads and public buildings *. 

u Ever since Mauritius passed into the hands of the British go- 
vernment, the colony has constantly improved. The fortifica- 
tions and public works have been greatly increased. The popu- 
lation has augmented by one-third, and we may say that the 
wealth and capital have been nearly trebled. The total production 
of sugar was in 1811 only 20,000,000 pounds; in 1830, the expor- 
tation of this article, for England only, amounted to 53,992,800 
pounds. The crop of coffee in 1811 was only 600,000 pounds; in 
1830, there were 7,066,199 pounds exported to Great Britain. 
These two articles form the principal productions of this colony; 
but the fertility of the soil renders all kinds of cultivation pro- 
ductive 2 . 

" In 1796, Ceylon came into the possession of the British. Since 

1. Pebrer, yoI. ii, pp. 135 to 138. — 2. idem, pp. 174, 175. 



92 



the year 1811, great public works have been undertaken or 
finished ; others have been improved, and agriculture has made 
great progress. The cinnamon gardens are become more numerous 
and larger; trade has become very extensive; the importations, 
which in 18] 3 were only 1,435,26-2/., and the exportations 
545,612/., are considerably increased. The gross value of the cin- 
namon exported yearly amounts, according to the returns of Cole- 
brooke and Cameron, to 138,000/. The cane, which has been in- 
troduced into this colony, succeeds admirably. The population of 
the island has also considerably augmented, and the Gherigulais, 
or natives, although regarded as the most indolent race in the East, 
are become industrious under the care of the British government, 
who have encouraged the natives of the neighouring countries, 
and especially the Chinese, to come and establish themselves on 
the most fertile spots in the best parts of the island *. " 

"All the productions of Europe have already been introduced into 
the Australian colonies. As to the manufactures, they have attained 
a considerable degree of prosperity. The population has increased 
fourfold since 1811 ; agriculture, commerce, and industry have made 
great progress ; and the navigation is thirty times more considerable 
than in 4811 . All these advantages are enhanced by the numerous 
literary, scientific, and charitable institutions that have been 
founded in the country. Indeed, all the improvements adopted by 
a nation celebrated for its commerce and industry have already 
been introduced into these distant countries. In order to form a 
just idea of these important colonies, we must imagine several 
towns of England transported as if by magic to a distance of 4,000 
leagues, with their courts of justice, assizes, municipalities, 
asylums for widows and orphans, hospitals, charitable institutions, 

public carriages, markets, newspapers, etc Now, if civilisation 

starts in Australia Avith all the advantages of the towns of old Eu- 
rope, what may not be expected in the course of a few centuries ? 
The British people, already profusely scattered in all the quarters 
of the globe, will finish by covering a great part of it with a race 
of intelligent, active men ; all speaking the same language, and go- 
verned by wise and solid institutions 2 . " 

" Colquhoun estimated the general population of British In- 
dia, in 1811, at 40,000,000; Hamilton carried it, in 1822, to 
83,000,000; it amounts at present, according to the last official 
reports, to 89,577,206 souls. Agriculture and all the productions 

1. Petirer, vol. ii, pp. 178, 179. — 2. Idem, pp. 196 to 197. 



93 



of the country have augmented in a relative or even greater pro- 
portion. It appears also, from the evidence produced before a 
committee of the Lords, that land in Berar, which before had been 
of little value, has now attained a high price. In Bengal, land is 
sold at 54 years' purchase \ " 

Next to this sketch of the English colonies place that of the Spa- 
nish colonies, which have long since disappeared, and the fail ure 
of the French colonies, and then say on which side is the superiority? 

Such a development given to industry and commerce might lead 
a reader, who had not visited England, to imagine that agriculture, 
if not neglected, is only a secondary consideration. But a little 
reflection will make him understand that intelligence and mora- 
lity are applicable to all things, to the land as well as to manu- 
factures, and experience will prove the truth of the reflection. 
Agriculture is not less prosperous in England than industry and 
commerce. A few short quotations will be sufficient to prove it : 
" It is often said, and with reason, that if industry in England 
presents admirable results , there is something still more admir- 
able, which is agriculture. The great landholders watch over 
their estates themselves, take an interest in all that relates to 
them, and make all kinds of experiments. Everywhere there are 
agricultural meetings, where prizes are distributed, and new 
discoveries or improvements discussed. The Agricultural Society 
of London has a revenue of several thousand pounds. The inter- 
course between the English landlord and tenant is much more 
patriarchal than in France. The losses of the farmer are always 
met on the part of the landlord by the renunciation of part or the 
whole of the rent 2 . " 

" English agriculture obtains with the fewest hands the largest 
quantity of produce, and feeds the greatest number of cultivators. 
It follows naturally that the capital must be larger, the methods 
more rational , knowledge more widely diffused, and the con- 
veyances more easy and numerous than elsewhere ; in short, that 
English agriculture, setting aside some particular cases, has made 
more progress, and is in a state of greater prosperity and higher 
perfection, than in any other country in the world. And of this 
1 am firmly convinced, in spite of all the lamentations excited by 
momentary embarrassments, which party spirit eagerly lays 
hold of to serve its own purposes 3 . " 

" We may safely assert that, since 1790, the rents have been at 

1. Pebrer, vol. n, p. 22-2. — 2. Nougarede, vol. m, pp. 907 to 909. — 3. Raumer, vol. l . 
p. 432. 



94 



least doubled in every part of England. This is not an assertion 
made at random; there are still people living who can prove it; 
and in Scotland the same fact is publicly recognised. The same 
farm in Essex, which then paid less than iO shillings an acre, 
now fetches from 40 to 50 shillings : and there are farms in 
Berkshire, which, in the same lapse of time, have risen from 
14 shillings to three pounds an acre; that is to say, to five times 
their original value. One of the causes that has the most contri- 
buted to the progress of agriculture is, without doubt, the steam 
engine. The marshes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire were 
very imperfectly drained by the windmills. Now that steam has 
replaced wind, the crops are protected from inundation, and that 
at a much cheaper rate than by the old method. Several ma- 
chines have been recently constructed of 60 or 70 horse-power, 
each being capable of draining 6 or 7,000 acres i . " 

" The condition of the country people is really comfortable : the 
dwellings are clean and neat, the food wholesome and abundant ; 
their clothes kept in good order ; they turn everything to account. 
c Where are the people? 1 the allied sovereigns exclaimed, on ar- 
riving in England in 1815 ; astonished at not seeing any signs of 
poverty in the curious crowds who thronged around them V* 

" Nowhere has the art of improving meadows and pasture 
grounds, of draining, manuring, turning up the soil, clearing 
away the stones, embanking, multiplying nutrition plants and 
weeding out noxious herbs, always so ready to spring up, been 
carried farther than in England; nowhere is the expense of 
creating and keeping in repair less considered when applied 
to a useful purpose ; and these enlightened efforts have produced 

real wonders 3 " " The superiority of English agriculture is not 

owing to the nature of the soil or the climate, but to the superi- 
ority of the mode of cultivation V " It cannot be concealed that 
by two or three modes of cultivation , employed on a large scale, 
the English, by the generality and simplicity of their methods, 
obtain general results very different to ours. Those of our depart- 
ments, which most resemble England in the nature and extent 
of their cultivation have obtained the most satisfactory results 5 . ** 
i( The gross produce of the soil exceeds that of France by one- 
third; this result is enormous, since it is attained notwithstanding 
the sterility of a part of Ireland, and of all the Highlands of Scot- 
land V " Thus, by a careful comparison of the agricultural pro- 



1. Ramiier, VOl. I, pp. 175 to 177. — 2. Nougai'ede, VOl. Til, p. 740. — 3. Revue dea Deux 
Mondes, January, 1853, p. 908. — 4. Idem, p. 913. — 5. Idem, p. 914. — 6. Idem, p. 918. 



95 



ducts, the number of the population, and the market price of land, 
it is proved that even in the most moderate estimation -the product 
of British agriculture, taken as a whole, was, five years ago, for 
an equal extent of ground compared with French agriculture, 
as 135 to 100; and, comparing England alone to the whole of 
France, the former produces at least twice as much as the latter. 
This valuation is sufficient to explain the superiority of the produce 
of land in England. Notwithstanding the natural inferiority of 
the soil and climate, the acquired fertility supplies the defi- 
ciency K " 

Ci M. Ledru-Rollin, with the intention of depreciating England, 
describes the soil of this country as being far from equal to that 
of Arragon and Lombardy. But, in asserting this fact, he bears 
testimony to the industry and energy of the inhabitants. With a 
soil certainly much inferior to that of these fertile provinces of 
Spain and Italy, Great Britain has, by the industry, science, and 
skill of her people, produced marvels in cultivation and agricultural 
products V 

ff The greater part of the land in the country of Suffolk is rent- 
ed by small farmers, who have only small capitals, and yet the 
ease and success with which it is cultivated is very remarkable. 
The fields are kept in admirable order. Everything betokens a 
population with habits of order, regularity, and neatness; and 
reminds us of the honest Dutch peasants on the right bank of the 
Rhine V 

We shall more fully comprehend this progress when we learn 
that agriculture in England is not, as in other countries, a despised 
profession, but that it is studied and encouraged by the noble, the 
wealthy, and the learned. "Thus, the Royal Agricultural Society, 
founded in 1838, has now 7,000 members. The rapid increase 
of this association, and the interest excited by its meetings, suffi- 
ciently attest its importance. The society publishes a journal, in 
which are reported the results of the experience and practice of the 
most skilful cultivators, together with an immense mass of facts, ga- 
thered from every quarter of the kingdom. It also gives prizes for 
cattle and agricultural implements, of which there is an exhibition 
every year in a different town , which excites an ever-increasing inte- 
rest and growing emulation. Thousands of farmers who go to these 
meetings imbibe there a spirit of improvement, and acquire a taste 
for experiments; and on their return home hasten to put in practice 



1. Revue des Deux H'ondes, ler March, p. 920. — 2. Revue Britannique, September, 1851, p. 199. 
— 3. idem, December, 1852, p. 300. 



96 

ail those improvements which, without the salutary efforts of the 
Royal Society, would have taken half a century to reach their 
localities i . " 

And it must not be supposed that the speculations of these 
learned bodies remain a sterile theory, or are only put in practice, 
as elsewhere, by a small number of amateurs, who ruin them- 
selves in experiments. No ; this knowledge is attained by the merest 
peasant : " Nothing shews better the progress that agricultural 
chemistry has made in England than a quarter of an hour's conver- 
sation with the first farmer that you meet. The greater number 
are already familiar with scientific terms; they speak of ammoniac 
and phosphate like professional chemists, and they understand 
perfectly well how greatly such studies tend to increase produc- 
tion. There are a multitude of cheap publications on these sub- 
jects; and travelling professors, who are paid by subscription, 
lecture on them through the country. A special and flourishing 
school of chemistry and geology, as applicable to agriculture, 
exists in London, under the direction of Mr. Nisbet V 

" Near the historical galleries at Woburn, which are ornamented 
by a number of portraits by Van Dyck, and where at every 
step you find traces of the illustrious members of the house 
of Russell, with princes and great men of their times, you find 
other galleries, filled with drawings and models of ploughs ; 
sketches of animals of different races; specimens of cultiva- 
ted plants; in fact, a complete rural museum. The house of 
Redford is as proud of these trophies as of the others. The duke 
has built for his labourers excellent cottages, with small gardens 
adjoining ; schools for their children, churches, etc. . . . There is no 
effort that an English farmer is not capable of making when he 
knows he has a good landlord, who will not impose too hard con- 
ditions on him, and who will be ready to assist him in case of need 3 /' 

" In Lincolnshire may be seen immense estates, and prosperous 
cultivation on a large scale. The farms present a magnificent spec- 
tacle. The agricultural buildings are all in excellent order. The 
farmers, rich for the greater part, have fine houses, numerous 
servants, hunting establishments, and fine saddle horses. It is, 
like Norfolk, the beau ideal of large estates and cultivation on a 
grand scale. I do not specify any particular farm ; it would be ne- 
cessary to mention all 4 ." 

Such is at present the state of society produced by the Protestant 



1. Revue Britannique, 2 e volume, 1845, p. 254, — 2. Revue des Deux Mondes, 1853, October, 
p. 248. — 3. idem, p. 252, — 4. Idem, p. 256. 



faith; and if any one still asked what is the connection between 
this material prosperity and that religious faith, Ave can show him, 
besides the morality, that we have already pointed out a cause, 
which every one can appreciate, instruction. We do not even 
speak of the special instruction drawn from the Bible, but of the 
general instruction diffused throughout the nation. 

e( Of all the associations in Great Britain, the Bible Society except- 
ed, none has displayed greater activity, or has obtained more 
extensive results, than the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know T - 
ledge. It acted upon the perfectly correct notion that it is possible 
to instruct the people by reading. The greater part of the works 
published by the society on agriculture, and on the mode of raising 
cattle, and the almanacks, etc., are very well written : and thus an 
immense quantity of reflections and useful knowledge are spread 
abroad in a manner of which, until these times, no one had any 
idea. This is the best method of destroying bad and immoral 
writings, always so dangerous for the people K" 

" It has been observed that the people in England are much 
more enlightened and judicious than in any other country. One 
is sometimes perfectly astounded at hearing individuals, belonging 
to the lowest class of society, reason very seriously on the laws, 
rights of property, privileges, etc., etc. It is not at all unusual 
to find this sort of people reading and commenting the public pa- 
pers 2 ." 

" The moral strength of nations consists in the average amount 
of intelligence and in the knowledge of the principles and practical 
institutions which direct human affairs. It is this ordinary know- 
ledge forms the statesman, the lawyer, the manufacturer, the trades- 
man; in a word, all the active members of a well-organised commu- 
nity. And in this respect no country can bear a comparison with 
England. No people has such a homogeneous intellect, and conse- 
quently such a strength of cohesion, if I may be allowed to employ 
this scientific term. 

" Our geometricians are more profound, and our engineers more 
learned; but their mechanicians and manufacturers surpass ours 
in number and practical skill. In some of our departments, ele- 
mentary instruction is more widely diffused than in certain 
countries of Great Britain; but where can be found on the other side 
of the Channel a whole province where, as in Britany, there is 
scarcely one child out of five hundred that goes to school ? Where 



1. Raunier, vol. i, pp. 401, 402. — 2. Archeimolz, vol. i, p. 6j. 
T. II. 



7 



98 



could be found populous towns entirely destitute of all intellectual 
resources, having neither an institution for education, a reading- 
room, or a bookseller ? 1 " 

The most lively faith and the most complete instruction will 
not make a government unnecessary for a nation; but they may 
render the task of governing more easy, and authority less burden- 
some to the people. And there can nowhere be found more 
respect for those who govern, or more liberty for the governed. 

iC England is advancing slowly, but firmly, towards the realisa- 
tion of the desire of the Great Alfred; that it was just that every 
Englishman should be as free as his thoughts. In England, we 
rarely see the convulsive efforts which mark the progress of other 
European nations; but, if we compare past ages with the present, 
we shall be convinced that no people has advanced so quickly and 
so wisely towards liberty, and has less frequently, in modern 
times, imbrued her hands in civil war 2 . " 

Equality makes progress in England, as in all the rest of the 
world. But England has this immense advantage, that it is by the 
elevation of the inferior classes, and not by the depression of the 
upper ones, that these inequalities disappear. The people are too 
proud to claim anything but liberty of action, certain that talent 
and energy will open to them the road to honours, which are 
accessible to all. The skill of the legislator, like that of the physi- 
cian, consists in re-establishing an equilibrium, by fortifying the 
weaker organs without weakening the stronger, and this, in my 
opinion, is what we see accomplished in England. The diffusion 
of knowledge among all classes, the extraordinary progress of in- 
dustry and talent, tend to augment the democratic principle with 
much more success than the system of government of any mi- 
nister, or the intrigues of any party, can strengthen the contrary 
principle ; but this development takes place without any convul- 
sion. From day to day the lower classes draw nearer to the middle 
classes, and the latter to the highest ranks of society, without the 
aristocracy having any right to complain that they are deprived of 
any of the advantages bequeathed to them by the traditions of times 
gone by 3 ." 

" England occupies a distinguished place amidst the happiest 
and best-governed nations of the present times ; and however far 
back the traditions of history may extend, there are no points of 
comparison which are not to her advantage*. " 

1. Madame de Stael, pp. 28, 29. — 2. Revue Britamrique, April, 1852, p. 28a. — 3. Madame 
de Stael, pp. ITS to 175. — h. D'Haussez, vol. i, p. 65. 



99 



" It is a truth, that does not admit of contradiction, that no 
civilised people were ever so free as the English are at present ; 
and those who are acquainted with the forms of government in 
ancient and modern times will undoubtedly he of this opinion. 
The inhabitants of England enjoy a felicity that is worthy of 
envy 1 . " " Time, in England, has happily consecrated two rights 
of the people : the liberty of the press, which is never trifled with ; 
and individual liberty 2 . " 

" An Englishman respects authority, and the agent who repre- 
sents it, whatever may be his rank, from the Lord Mayor to the 
lowest policeman • and I hasten to add, that a public functionary 
very seldom goes beyond the legal limits of his prescribed duties. 
As he his respected in the exercise of his functions, he encounters 
no illegal resistance or insult that can excite his anger and 
prompt him to violence 3 . " 

u In England, the police is national, and its strength is irresis- 
tible. The civilisation of this people is carried so far that we may 
say with truth that what is wanting at present is ignorance 4 . " 

This respect of the English for men invested with authority is 
not so much paid to the man as to the law, of which he is the re- 
presentative. Thus we see the simple policeman obeyed, and the 
lord respected : " The House of Lords do not abuse their power," 
says M. Leon Faucher, '* because they feel that it would be weak- 
ened by any excess. Besides this natural tendency, public opinion is 
ever on the watch, and obliges them to conform their decisions to 
the rules of the most scrupulous ecraity. Here, again, theory is 
corrected by practice 3 . " 

So much for the noble lord, now for the humble police agent: 
66 In France, it excites astonishment that there should be a coun- 
try on earth where you run no risk of being murdered at the 
corner of every street, although there is not a gendarme to be seen; 
where the safety of the government is not in any danger, although 
it keeps no spies ; where there are fine roads, although there are nei- 
ther special schools for the construction of bridges and roads, nor 
engineers. Who supply the place, may be asked, of the funct.on- 
aries that seem indispensable in a well-organised society ? Who 
supply their place? Reasonable beings, who are taught by good 
sense, custom, instinct, patriotism, and self-love, applied to the 
interest of the public, to comprehend each other. It is all this 
which supplies the place of what, in other countries, is established 

i. Tableau de I'Angleterre, par (TArchennolZ, Vol. I, pp. 8 et 9. — 2. PicllOt, Vol. lij p. 81. — 

3. Simon, vol. i, pp. 106 to 107.— 4. Cusline, vol. n, p. 88. — 5. Leon Faucher, vol. n. p. 425. 



100 

by uniform codes, well-administered, but producing a bad result 1 . 
If a road is to be made ? Every one sets to work ; the great proprie- 
tor indicates the direction ; the land surveyor traces it out ; the 
mason constructs the bridges; every one takes a share in the 
work, according to the nature and extent of his abilities and his 
rank in society : the road begun by one parish is continued by 
another, and thus crosses the country and the kingdom. Who 
conceived the first idea of it? who superintended its execution ? No 
one and every one. It exists, it is used, and society is so much the 
richer 2 /' 

" It is by a kind of general co-operation that order reigns 
everywhere in London. If we were tempted to draw a parallel 
between the police of England and that of France, we should per- 
ceive, not without sorrow, that while ours is mean, meddling, and 
disagreeably negligent, the English police watches over every- 
thing with attention and solicitude, without persecuting any one, 
and seeming never to interfere 3 ." 

The best of governments will always be obliged to repress, but 
its excellence may be shown in the way in which this task is ac- 
complished. We shall therefore say a few words on the prisons, 
and the more readily that their management is as much the result 
of the manners of the people as of the laws of the country. 

First, a few words on the accused : " An accused person is 
never put in chains on the free soil of England. The accused 
are treated there with so much mildness, that they are not even 
interrogated, during the trial, on the circumstances of the affair, 
that they may not be forced to criminate themselves 4 . ■* 

Now, a picture of the prisons themselves : By sobriety, clean- 
liness, regular labour, solitude, religious and intellectual instruc- 
tion, the maladies of the soul are cured, and by degrees the pri- 
soners acquire habits of order and industry. By depriving them 
of all communication with others, they are forced to reflect, and 
are preserved from bad company. In short, it is by this moral- 
ising course that they arrive at (he complete reform of individuals 
whom society had rejected, and who seemed to live only to vio- 
late all its laws 5 . " 

" The infirmary of Cold-Bath Prison is an abode of peace and 
comfort. The care taken of this infirmary sbows sufficiently 
that the governor considers each sick prisoner as an unhappy 
brother, whom his duty requires him to relieve. There is no 



1. D'HailSSeZ, VOl. H, p. 130. — 2. Idem, pp. 130 to 133. — 3. Observations rccueillies en 

Angkierre, by C.-G. Simon, vol. i, p. 1C6. — k. Diet. — 5. Simon, vol. i, pp. 227 and 228. 



101 



canteen in the prison, and the food is the same for all, without 
the slightest difference in favour of any one. 1 saw the prisoners at 
dinner; each division has its own refectory; the tables, made of 
excellent wood, are carefully rubbed and washed, and not a spot 
tarnishes their surface. The small bowl in which the prisoners 
eat is of pewter, and cleaned and scrubbed till it shines like silver. 
The food is wholesome and plentiful 1 ." 

" We passed into the women's prison. There reigns the same 
cleanliness, order, and silence, and the regulations are enforced with 
the same severity. The women are more occupied than the men; 
they make all the linen that is required in the establishment. 
There is also a superb laundry, drying-place, and ironing-room; a 
great number of women are constantly employed in washing and 
scrubbing the floors of the rooms, cells, passages, and staircases ; 
even the pavement of the yards is also washed and scrubbed. It 
would be possible to go over the whole of these vast buildings in 
white satin shoes and a muslin dress, without having them stain- 
ed by a drop of water or a grain of dust. It is really admirable 2 . " 

" In the Model Prison of Millbank, the floor of the passages, as 
well as that of the cells, is made of small planks of white wood, 
like the tables in Cold-Bath Prison ; and is so clean and polished 
that one might draw upon it. The furniture of the cells is not 
confined to what is indispensably necessary. They have a bed 
well made, sheets perfectly white, a small press, a table, and a 
shelf, on which is arranged what is necessary for dressing. All this 
is fitted to the place, and is as clean and shining as if it were 
new 3 . " 

Finally, what neither church, schools, authority, nor prisons 
can effect, charity will attempt. The number of charitable asso- 
ciations in England is incalculable. Without mentioning the 
purely religious societies, who for the diffusion of the Gospel at 
home and abroad spend more than 400,000/. annually, we shall 
quote a few lines on the purely charitable societies, for in this 
place it is not our intention to exhibit the faith, but the morality, 
which ought to be a proof of the truth of the religious belief : 

" The national character and the legislation," says M. Simon, 
u co-operate in England in forming associations of every kind, 
both foe the instruction and the relief of the poor. Let an institu- 
tion of this kind be founded in a town, subscriptions pour in 
immediately ; every citizen thinks it an honour to figure on the 



1. Tristan, pp. 193 to 194. — 2. Idem, pp. 199, 200. — 3. Idem, p, 2Q8, 



102 



list of benevolent persons who set on foot a work of charity or 
education. Legacies are numerous; and; by degrees, an institu- 
tion, which at first was weak and precarious , becomes settled 
upon a firm, broad, and lasting basis. I wish I could place one of 
these subscription lists before the eyes of my fellow-countrymen; 
how many of them would have reason to blush at their selfish 
apathy and sordid indifference, at seeing how liberally and ge- 
nerously our neighbours act in circumstances in which, among 
ourselves, we should scarcely receive a single contribution " 

Let us accompany M. Victor Chevalier in his visits to some of 
the public institutions for the relief of the poor in England; and 
first let us listen to what he says of the Unions ; 

C( The discipline of these establishments is austere, although 
parental, and the habits contracted there are satisfactory. They 
constitute an excellent asylum for aged and infirm persons ; but 
for the lazy and pretended poor they are a hard abade, that drives 
them back to an honourable life of labour and activity. Thus they 
form a rampart strong enough to resist the encroachments of 
false pauperism; for it is sufficient for the relieving officers to 
oblige those whom they consider as false poor to enter these houses, 
and in a very short time they abandon the unions, and cease to 
require assistance. I have been assured that this preventive 
method had produced such an effect, that there were not in the 
unions a fifteenth part of the total number of relieved poor, and 
that the rest received in their own homes assistance very judi- 
ciously distributed. 

" Such is the assistance granted to the poor who are in their own 
parish at the time they claim it, or in a parish in which they have 
resided for a twelvemonth. Those who do not fulfil these con- 
ditions go to the nearest parish, where they obtain bread and a 
hard lodging for one night. The next morning they are sent 
on in the direction of their own parish ; and they receive, if they 
desire it, bread and lodging in the unions which are on their 
way, until they arrive at the end of their journey. 

ic By these severe regulations the love of the poor for their 
native place is strengthened, and they are in general brought back 
to the parish where they were born ; there they begin life anew, 
in the midst of their families, and under the purifying influence of 
recollections of their infant years. They soon resume their old 
occupations; and those who had abandoned rural life, led away by 



1. Simon, vol. i, p. 245, 246. 



103 



a false hope of obtaining lucrative employment in cities, return to 
the more healthful and certain labours of agriculture. 

(i The rate imposed on each parish, for the support of the 
unions, varies from one parish to another according to the extent 
of the parish, or the number of poor requiring assistance. The 
reduction, then, of their number is a matter of material as well as 
moral interest. The result is, a complete harmony between the 
government, the counties, and the parishes in their views and in 
their efforts for founding institutions destined to render the exist- 
ence of the labouring classes comfortable, and cause them to acquire 
habits of industry and good conduct % " 

" On the Sabbath, so religiously observed in Great Britain, the 
children go to school, as on a week day, and are conducted by their 
masters to divine service: and, besides this, before and after the 
service, they receive moral and religious instruction ; given to the 
boys by young men, and to the girls by young ladies, belonging to 
the most distinguished families in the parish. I have been present 
at these lessons, where the children, ranged in groups of seven or 
eight round their young and willing teachers, acquired at once 
sound notions, excellent habits, and true politeness ; that is to say, 
Christian charity applied to our intercourse with each other. By 
this touching influence of the richer on the. poorer classes is esta- 
blished a noble system of patronage, which is perpetuated in one form 
or another through life, and suggests a word of advice or consola- 
tion for every difficulty and misfortune; refines and elevates all 
the citizens ; and forms of this singular society, where the aristo- 
cracy enjoys such enormous privileges, a whole harmoniously at- 
tached to the institutions of the country. 

" When we add that most of the public functions in the parish 
are gratuitous ; that the unions, as well as the schools, are directed 
by charitable committees, who meet periodically to settle the 
budget of the past week, and arrange that of the week ensuing; 
that these committees appoint one of their number to inspect the 
union daily during the seven days that elapse between two of 
their sittings ; and that it is only the officers in constant employ- 
ment, residing in the unions, who are remunerated, some idea may be 
formed of the incessant labours of the rich for the relief of the 
poor, and the amelioration of the condition of all 2 . " 

" In order to diminish the suffering occasioned by the high price 
of the dwellings of the labouring classes, and also to improve their 

i. V. Chevalier, pp. 4 to 8. — 2. Idem, pp. 8 to 10, 



104 



habitations and render them more healthy, private charity has pro- 
vided buildings divided into small separate lodgings, which have 
been constructed of late years in the manufacturing towns. Some 
of these dwellings are appropriated to single men, others to 
married persons, and others again to single women ; they are kept 
in good order, and the price of the lodgings is fixed by settlement. 
Some are sold on condition, that as soon as they are occupied and 
bring in four or five per cent. ; and the capital serves to construct 
other habitations of the same nature. By these ingenious combi- 
nations, the number of workmen's houses will continue to increase 
until the ordinary prices of healthy and convenient lodgings will 
have been reduced within proper limits. These are some of the 
institutions by which a rich and powerful nation gives educa- 
tion to the labouring classes, defends their interests, and assists 
them in their misfortunes. When they sink into poverty, public 
charity assists them, and at the same time the government, by its 
skilful and persevering foreign poiicy, endeavours to increase the 
number of markets for trade, in order to procure new work for 
hands temporarily deprived of employment . Assistance, then, except 
to the old and infirm, is always considered as an accidental neces- 
sity, and private persons unite their efforts to those of the govern- 
ment, in order to render such trials as easy and brief as possible 1 /' 

" The service of the hospitals is confided to the most eminent 
practitioners. The excellence of the beds, the cleanliness of the 
rooms, and the wholesomeness of the food, leave no room for im- 
provement. The different asylums, with a more modest appear- 
ance, enjoy the same advantages and in the same degree. As to 
charity schools, it is not an elementary instruction afforded out of 
compassion to the children of the poor, but a system of education 
wisely adapted to their intellectual capacities, and to the profes- 
sions for which they show any aptitude. A great number of pu- 
pils leave these schools sufficiently prepared for the universities. 
Rich parents could nowhere find, at the greatest expense, a belter 
education for their children in any seminary. It is by hard study 
that the pupil must obtain, in afterlife, preferment in the Church, or 
an honourable situation in law, medicine, or any other profession 2 /' 

But, as we fear to weary the reader by entering into a detailed 
examination of such a multitude of charitable institutions, we shall 
content ourselves with copying a simple list contained in the 
Siecle of the 8 th of February, 185-4, which begins as follows : 

1. V. Chevalier, pp. 11 to 13. — 2. Saint-Germain Leduc, pp. 2, 3. 



. 105 

** London possesses at this time 530 charitable establishments : 



i. 

92 Hospitals, with an annual revenue of 266,923 

12 Societies, for the preservation of the public health and morality 35,717 

17 Societies for the welfare of prisoners and prisons 39,486 

13 Societies for the aid of the wounded in the streets 18,316 

14 For special accidents 27,387 

25 In aid of the Jews, or mixed marriages 10,000 

19 For workmen 9,124 

12 For pensions 23,677 

15 For assistance to the clergy 35,301 

32 For different professions and trade 53,467 

30 For trade only 25,000 

126 Asylums for the aged 87,630 

9 For the deaf, dumb, and blind 25,050 

13 Orphan asylums 45,465 

15 For the children of the parish schools 88,228 

21 Societies for the increase of schools 72,247 

43 For the home missions 319,705 

14 Foreign missions 459,688 

5 Societies not classed 3,252 

The sale of religious books produces 100,000 

To which must be added different revenues 160 

The 530 charitable establishments of London distribute annually among the • 

poor and suffering the sum of 1,745,795*" 



Let us leave the capital for the country ; there we shall find 
the same charity. For brevity's sake, we will only give a single 
example : 

" Mr. W. T. C. Cooper, the principal landholder in the parish 
of Toddington, Bedfordshire, determined, in 1829, to try whether, 
by making small allotments of land to poor families, it would 
not be possible to lessen the poor-rate. The six families he first 
selected used every exertion to keep their lots in good condition. 
Their labour was rewarded by excellent crops, and their ardour 
for work augmented in consequence. The experiment made by 
Mr. Cooper having succeeded, all the labourers came and asked for 
land; he then determined to divide a large field between M per- 
sons. All these men, who before spent their evenings sauntering 
about, and often in planning mischief, are now occupied in what 
they call their field. The stranger who visits this parish cannot 
behold without pleasure these heads of M families, all occupied 
in digging, hoeing, and weeding the lot that belongs to them, as 
soon as the day's work for their employer is finished. They remain 
there until night forces them to cease from their labour, and then 
return to their families, instead of going prowling about, as before 
they were in the habit of doing, to s^e what depredation they could 
commit. All are now noted for their good conduct. 



406 

« Mr. Cooper, in 4831, added 34 more lots to the 47 that he had 
already granted to his day labourers. They are obliged to pay their 
rent exactly when due. Whoever should be convicted of an offence, 
would lose his lot; they are bound to watch over the conduct of 
their children with the greatest care, and not to allow any of the 
young ones to be out of doors after nightfall. Up to this time all 
the tenants have paid their rent with the greatest punctuality. 
Mr. Cooper, at first, would only grant lots to men noted for their 
good conduct; he has since granted some to characters relatively 
bad, and he has had no reason to repent it. One of the latter said 
to him, on asking for land : ' I know you have not a good opinion of 
' me, but give me the means of employing my time honestly, and 
6 you shall see that my land shall be as well cultivated as that of 
c any other, and that my conduct shall be irreproachable.' This 
man has kept his word, and his lot is one of the best cultivated of 
all those distributed by Mr. Cooper V 

This is England, such as she has been made by the Protest* 
ant faith. Now, shall we conclude that she is superior to Catholic 
Spain? 

This would be so poor a pretension, that our readers would accuse 
us of endeavouring to prove what is evident. We shall take a 

i. We will here present our reader, in a note, with a document which reached us too late for 
insertion in its proper place, in oar chapter on the United States. It contains the legacies 
lately left by Mr. Phelps, an American Protestant. 

Mr. Phelps, after having bequeathed to his wife and children what he thought sufficient for 
them, left the following sums to different religious societies ; 



. . . .'-■i.. ■' i. ■ 

Bible Society 20,000 

Missionary Society for the Heathen , 20,000 

Home Missionary Society 20,000 

Society of colonisation for the theological and literary education of 

the negroes in Liberia 10,000 

School of Theology in iNew-York , 1,000 

Asylum for the Blind T .. , 1,000 

Society at New York for sending negroes to Liberia 1,000 

School of Theology at Auburn , . . . . , 600 

Asylum for half orphans 200 

Asylum for orphan negroes 200 

To the poor of the church of Simsbury , 200 



\ Total. 74,200*. 



A short time before his death, Mr. Phelps had remitted 20,000?. to his son, and desired he 
would employ the interest for pious purposes. 

Finally, after having bequeathed 2,000*. to each of his twenty-two grandsons for their own 
use, he left each of them an additional thousand pounds, with the following clause : 

" I beg my executor to inform my grandchildren that I desire this last legacy should be 
considered as a sacred trust, which is confided to them in order that it may be placed safely, and 
that the interest may be consecrated to the propagation of the Gospel and the advancement of 
the Lord's Kingdom upon eart h, I hope, and I feel confident that our Heavenly Father will grant 
to all of them the wisdom that is from above, and will incline their hearts to be faithful stewards, 
in order that the same sum may be transmitted entire to their descendants for the same pur- 
poses. I know that this legacy is absolute, and that the sum thus given is no longer at my 
disposal ; but I earnestly trust that my desire will be taken for what it is , an obligation which 
is binding on their integrity and honour." These legacies for pious purposes amount to the 
enormous sum of 116,200*. {Archives du Christianisme, du 11th February, 1854.) 



107 



higher aim. To the glory of the Gospel we will maintain that 
England is superior to all the other nations of Europe, and, in 
order to give more weight to our judgment, we shall, according 
to our rule, leave it to be proved, by French Catholic authorities : 
ff J say it with regret, v writes a French traveller, " England is not 
known. The distance between England and France is immense : on 
one side, a system skilfully followed up, and so completely inocu- 
lated even into the minutest ramification of the social body, that 
there is not an Englishman to be found, either at home or abroad, 
in England or at the antipodes, who by his labour does not contri- 
bute to the triumphs of the mother country. But, in return, the 
mother country protects all her children. On surveying what has 
been accomplished by his country, an Englishman feels himself 
greater for her conquests, her wealth, her power, her credit, her 
government : in short, he is proud of being an Englishman, and he 
is right to be so 1 ." 

" No nation appears to follow so uniformly a destiny of pro- 
gress and civilisation : none can advance with a firmer faith than 
the English nation towards happiness and material prosperity; 
through all the transformations of ages, it always exhibits its stan- 
dard qualities 2 ." 

" On the point of quitting England," says also M. de Custine, (i 1 
rejoice at having seen a society whose civilisation has so far 
surpassed that of all neighbouring States. When we have exa- 
mined the height she has attained in our times, we may to some 
extent venture to predict what will be the future destinies of 
Europe V 

" England, " adds M. de Montuli, " is advanced so far in civili- 
sation, that, according to the character and opinions of the observer, 
she must be judged in very different ways. When one has always 
lived amidst the confusion, negligence, and I might almost say 
carelessness, of the French, with a natural taste for order and clean- 
liness, it is impossible not to admire this country, where every- 
thing is regulated, and where Nature herself appears to wear her 
most brilliant colours. As to me, 1 should be exclusively enchant- 
ed with England if T had not already seen Germany, and, above 
all, the United States 4 . The towns and villages everywhere have 
an aspect of wealth and cleanliness, and, in justice to England, [ 
must confess that the United States, and some part of Germany, 
can alone, in this respect, enter into competition with her U J 

t. Bureau, vol. i, p. 16. — 2. idem, pp. 39, 40. — 3. Custine, vol. u, p. 433. — 4. Mon- 
tuli, VOl. I, pp. 17 to 19. — 5. Idem, p. 230. 



108 

Let us listen to M. Simon, whom we have already quoted : " My 
task is nearly ended ; I have described successively all the most 
important branches of the great manufacturing industry, of that 
industry which has elevated England above all other nations, and 
made an Island, of moderate extent, the centre of the affairs of the 
whole world l . It is evident that in a great many respects England 
surpasses France. No national feeling can sufficiently blind our 
eyes to make us see the contrary : habits of order and calculation 
Jong since acquired, methods of operating perfected by long prac- 
tice, workmen formed at an early age by example and by a serious 
apprenticeship to industrial manipulations; the genius for mecha- 
nism innate in Englishmen, and stimulated by the imperious 
necessity of producing continually, and at a cheap rate; the abun- 
dance of raw materials furnished by the soil ; the facilities offered 
for the arrival of merchandise, and the numberless means of com- 
munication; a complete system of banking and credit, and perfect na- 
tional security; these are the advantages which in a great many 
points secure an incontestable superiority to Great Britain 2 . " 

Finally, we may be allowed to quote a few words from Madame 
de Stael, after the Catholic writers : " It is impossible to examine 
England, even with a mind strongly prepossessed against her, with- 
out being forced to acknowledge that civilisation has made greater 
progress there than in any nation on the Continent ; that know- 
ledge is more widely diffused; the science of government better un- 
derstood ; and all the movements of the social machine are more 
rapid and more skilfully combined. To deny this fact, would be 
in some manner to contest the importance of all the political insti- 
tutions which have been for centuries the object of the medita- 
tion of the wise, and of the efforts of nations 3 ." 

In concluding our survey of Spain and England, we address to 
the reader's conscience this twofold question : First, is it not true 
that Spain, favoured with the finest climate, placed at the head of 
Europe, enriched with a world, but remaining Catholic, has conti- 
nued to decline and grow poorer, to sink at last into ignorance, 
misery, and immorality? 

Secondly, is it not true that England, with a sterile soil, a cloudy 
sky, and starting from the lowest rank among European nations, 
but having embraced Protestantism, is now prosperous, enlight- 
ened, moral, and at the head of the civilised world ? 

We subscribe beforehand to the answer of our readers, and now 



1. Simon, VOl. II. p. "247. 2. Id.m p. 249. 



— 3, Madame de Stael, p. 21. 



109 



pass on to our last comparison : Catholicism on the Papal Throne in 
Italy, and the Reformation crushed beneath the feet of Royalty in 
France. If, notwithstanding her infallible prop, the former de- 
clines; if, in spite of her powerful persecutor, the latter increases 
in power and influence, we shall be forced to conclude that the 
fall of the one is owing to the slow but fatal consequences of error; 
and the triumph of the other to the influence, not less slow but 
not less certain, of everlasting truth. 



CATHOLICISM 

ON THE THRONE IN ITALY. 



What is the relative value of Catholicism and of Reform ? Such, 
expressed in general terms, is the question we would wish to exa- 
mine. We have already given to this question two answers, 
identical in their result : one by comparing two by two those nations 
following the two Churches; the other, by examining separately 
each people bending to one or other of these two religious faiths. 

We shall again, therefore, take up the problem thus twice solved, 
and by a third demonstration arrive at the same solution. 

This third method of proof will be the study of any one parti- 
cular nation, being as much as possible the pure produce of Catholi- 
cism ; of a nation which has sucked no other milk but that which 
flows from the maternal bosom, reared in the lap of its own family, 
watched with a tenderness which the fondest parent can but ill 
bestow on children living apart from the domestic hearth; a nation, 
in short, which has never been exposed to the venom of heresy, 
and one we are entitled to regard as the favoured child. We have 
named Italy. Italy, who enjoins the simple privilege of possessing 
in her bosom the infallible Head of the Church, the Vicar of God. 
" The active influence of Papacy, " says M. Quinet, (i is nowhere 
more visible than in Italy * it is there it must be studied in order to 



become possessed of its secret workings, since there the Church 
reigns sole sovereign mistress. This policy is based upon an un- 
bounded hope, in which the whole nation has a share. " Let us 
see, therefore, what Romanism has done for this magnificent coun- 
try. The history of Papacy may, for the better management of our 
subject, be divided into two periods : the one during which the 
Popes relied upon the people to subjugate Kings, and the one during 
which they united with Kings in order to subjugate the people. 
The moment of transition between the two epochs is the sixteenth 
century. Until that time the authority of the Church had been 
uncontested. The Sovereign Pontiffs who had preceded that era 
took small account of the progress of liberty or enlightenment. 
The Renaissance, aided by the discovery of the art of printing, had 
just begun to disseminate a taste for literature and science. Pope 
Leo X, himself unconscious of the danger, had proclaimed himself 
the protector of all liberal arts. But, from the moment when it was 
discovered that this new light was something more than a mere 
rocket let off for the amusement of his court, and that the torch was 
held aloft by the hand of the wise and the learned to enlighten the 
multitude upon the rights of the people and the errors of the Church, 
Rome changed her policy on the instant, and deserting the cause of 
the people, which she had used for her ambition, passed over to 
# the camp of the Sovereigns, whose alliance had now become of the 
greater value. Henceforward, Popes and Sovereigns made com- 
mon cause against the people ; both having to safeguard the prin- 
ciple of power against the inroads of human liberty. Rome no 
longer sought to govern the world by her doctrines alone, but to 
inspire moreover the monarchs of Europe by an identity of interest 
with her. To extinguish the growing light, to preach the divine 
right of the Holy See, to 'persecute learning under the name of 
heresy, to reward by the bestowal of heaven and earth whoever 
took service in her behalf, to associate in her glory the populations 
by which she was surrounded, by proclaiming their soil holy ground, 
their city an eternal city, their country the cent re of Christendom, 
until it became that of the whole universe ; such became from that 
hour the policy of the Papal Court. Italy accepted this wardship; lured 
by the hopes of inheritance, she suffered herself to be led, instructed, 
and became the humble and submissive pupil of Catholicism. It is 
Catholicism which has formed her people and her princes, inspired 
her customs and laws, brought about her material position; in 
short, created and kneaded the whole state to an image of her own 
likeness. By studying the work we shall therefore become ac- 



113 



quainted with the workman; let us examine Italy, and we shall 
soon learn the worth of Catholicism. 

By the foregoing observations, it will be understood that our 
study of Italy will not go further back than the sixteenth cen- 
tury ; before this epoch, Italy had not been so entirely the work of 
Papacy ; in the first place, because her Sovereign Pontiffs had left 
to the people the enjoyment of a liberty they had not yet dared 
to dread, and in the second because they had not yet gone over 
to the camp of the Sovereigns to league against the people. The 
awakening of altars of arts and science at the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, even before the Reformation, had been produced 
by the arrival of the learned men driven out of Constantinople. 
The Renaissance is Pagan and not Catholic; if proof of this were 
wanting, it would be enough to remark that is was the Popes who 
stifled it ; the study of Greek and Hebrew, which led to the study 
of the Book, and consequently to the discovery of the abuses of 
Rome, was forbidden. And we ask those who dare affirm that the 
Romish Church was favourable to the Renaissance, because a Pope 
gave it admission for a moment into his palace, how it happens that 
from that very time she impeded its progress, and repulsed its 
advances ? 

But our documents will throw some little light upon these asser- 
tions. Let us examine, first of all, the state of Italy at the time of 
the Renaissance, just before Papacy had wrought a change in all 
things : 

" From the grandest centuries of antiquity, " says Henry Martin, 
"the world had not presented so magnificent a spectacle as that 
offered by Italy at the close of the middle ages ; she had decked 
herself with the master-works of the human mind like a queen 
adorning her brow, for the last time, with the finest jewels of her 
diadem, when about to descend from her throne to hold out her 
hands to the shackles of slavery. Her superiority, which had been 
undisputed in the science of government, was still universally 
acknowledged in literature, in industry, and commerce, as well as 
in almost every appliance of human thought to human activity ; 
but above all, and more than ever, in the fine arts. 

" The Renaissance continued to march with giant strides, sus- 
tained by the printing press. 

" The secondary arts, such as the working of gold and silver, 
the carving of wood and ivory, the graving of metals, joining, en- 
graving, closely allied to the principal branches of high art, aided 
them by their plastic tendency more defined and vigorous : Polo 
t. n. 8 



114 



Uccello introduced perspective into painting, and Masolihd dis- 
played the advantages of chiaroscuro, and the movement of light 
and shadow; that magical science which till then was unknown 
by the painters of Bruges, in the sameness of their splendour : 
painting began then to express, with a newly-awakened truth , na- 
ture and reality, without losing the real aim of art, the ideal ; and 
Masaccio united all his progress in a whole so perfect, that it 
is held up to this day as an example to the painters of modern 
times. 

" The instruments and material resources for the aid of art 
ceased not from multiplying; the importance given to the quality 
of precision in form, from the moment when the expression of the 
countenance alone sufficed no longer to the cravings of the ad- 
mirers of art, and the human form was disengaged from the 
floating draperies of the middle ages, brought forward the study 
of anatomy, and while the art of design was marching towards 
perfection, colouring was becoming more and more brilliant as it 
progressed. 

" From one extremity of Italy to the other, the fine arts were 
developing in every direction an ardour, a vigour, and a fecundity 
almost incredible; illustrious professors and flourishing schools 
arose in the most unimportant cities; the encyclopedic universa- 
lity of the men who headed this prodigious march forward, con- 
founds the imagination; the greatest artists cultivating at one and 
the same time, and with the same degree of glory, every branch of 
art, placed themselves at the" same time at the head of the move- 
ment then taking place in the exact sciences, and associated their 
names with the progress of philosophy and letters. " 

Such was the end of the fifteenth century ; but observe that this 
prosperity is all material ; it is as much as we can do to call it in- 
tellectual; most assuredly it was not moral. It was neither the ar- 
rival of a few learned hellenists, nor the study of the pagan litera- 
ture of the ancients, which could purify the moral of the age. 
These morals were of the lowest tone ; there were those of the olden 
time, anterior to the Renaissance ; it had needed the lapse of cen- 
turies to establish them ; it was these bad morals, and not useful 
sciences, which Papacy had been employed in forming. Listen to 
our author : " In the very bosom of Italy the other elements of 
moral and intellectual life were unable to follow the rapid soaring 
upwards of the fine arts. Italy was carried away by a sublime 
fever rather than by activity in the pursuit of her genius; more 
impassioned for the produce of her arts than penetrated with the 



115 



principles of their greatness, she was endowed with more feeling 
than understanding. 

(C The corrosive principle of materialism found compensation 
enough for its theoretical inferiority in the ravages which it was 
allowed to exercise in a society intoxicated With voluptuous luxuries. 
Italy was in travail, at the same time, with the extremes of good 
and evil, and brought them forth together, like those terrible 
climates of the East whose sun produces at once the most lovely 
blossoms and the most deadly poisons, the most hideous monster 
and the graceful bird of paradise. Crime revelled in its peculiar 
intoxication, as well as genius in its extacies; morality had not 
sustained itself to the height, of the intelligence of the time. Evil 
had grown and multiplied, political virtue was declining in the 
citizen, religious conscientiousness was dying in the priest; the 
Papal dignity, still grand and imposing under Nicolas V and Pius II, 
with whom political genius, the love of letters, and moral dignity, 
compensated externally at least for the weakening of faith, Papacy, 
say we, bad plunged itself from precipice to precipice, until the 
childhood of Alexander VI. Rome, thrown back to the days of 
Tiberius and Nero, saluted with idolatrous acclamations the mon- 
ster of impurity, whom a diabolical conclave had just proclaimed 
vicar of Jesus Christ. Incest, murder, and infidelity had seated 
themselves on the throne of Saint Peter, side by side with this man 
who seemed the very incarnation of the spirit of evil. Alexander VI 
face to face with Perugino ! what an ideal and what a reality ! 1 h 

The contrast between the admirable paintings of Perugino, and 
the abominable deeds of the Pope who reigned at the close of the 
fifteenth century, is characteristic therefore of the general contrast 
between the state of art and that of social morality at the same 
epoch in Italy. 

But this " Renaissance, this awakening of the arts and sciences, 
if not this renovation of manners, to whom did it owe its birth ? To 
the strangers and foreigners from the East, to the literature of the 
heathens originally from Greece, and not to Papacy. We will 
prove this from good authority : " The history of the last Crusade, 
so fertile in events, is merely an episode of the life of Samt Louis. 
To retrace them here would be to incur the charge of repetition. 
The saintly king, with one of his sons and a troop of Christians, lost 
their lives in this Crusade. Many Popes have since attempted to 
call together the Christians of Europe in that inhospitable land, 

1. Martin, \oi. vhi, ji. 273. 



1 IG 

■watered with the blood of several generations. The incessant emi- 
grations from West to East have had most important political 
results. It was the unconscious march of barbarism towards civi- 
lisation. These words resume the whole history of the Crusades. 
The summary result will suffice : the progressive concession of 
charters, the establishment of districts, the rehabilitation of the 
royal prerogative, until then a mere nominal dignity without 
real power, often without honour, but never without danger; 
total change of morals and customs, brought about by continued 
migrations from West to East for more than two centuries; the 
origin and progress of industry, of agriculture, and commerce by 
this lengthened and uninterrupted communication between nations 
who hitherto had been unknown to each other even by name. 
The French went themselves to the East in quest of these rich 
Indian stuffs and Oriental spices they had hitherto received from 
the Greeks and Venetians. 

i( Navigation became a necessity. A merchant navy was form- 
ed; the populations of Europe, until then penned in their respec- 
tive folds, scattered and isolated, were no longer strangers to each 
other L . " 

But gradually the arts declined during the reign of the Lower 
Empire, and sank at length to entire nothingness. The kingdom 
of Byzantium seemed however to have preserved some importance, 
when the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. in J 453. forced 
all artists to fly from a city and a country where the sword w~as the 
only method of reasoning. The religion of the Turks forbidding 
the imitation of the human figure, or of any natural object, the 
artists tied in all haste. Some took refuge in Germany, others in 
Italy, Venise, or Florence 2 . " 

The Renaissance, therefore, was an intellectual and not a moral 
movement. It brought back the taste for literature, the fine arts, 
and certain sciences ; but, circumscribed in its influence, it was 
not the work of Papacy; it took decidedly its origin in the East. 

This Renaissance had needed for its development the blessings 
of study and liberty. This study and this liberty, first of all 
applied to profane ends, might have been afterwards adapted to 
holy purposes. Luther made it understood. The Church of Rome 
grew alarmed ; and. in order to strike at the root of the evil, declar- 
ed herself inimical not only to the free study of theology, but to 
every kind of study, to every kind of liberty. We are about to 

I. Dietiotmaire ie la Canversalim, al the v..;-;.. Gr<HSAD£S. — 2. Id m, at the word RENAISSANCE. 



117 



behold her at work to extinguish the light of human reasoning, 
to compress human thought and impede all progress, both moral 
and physical, which could tend by elevating the human race to 
rescue it from her domination. But it is time to let our authors 
speak for themselves, and prove what we have asserted. We will 
first of all demonstrate, through them, the inspiring principles of 
Papacy, and afterwards contemplate the fruits they have borne : 

" Up to the date of the Council of Trent, " says M. de Sismondi, 
cf the Popes had contracted a species of alliance with the masses 
against their sovereigns ; they were the protectors of philosophy and 
letters, they acknowledged liberty, and looked favourably on Re- 
publics; but when one division of the Church, raising the standard 
of the Reformation, shook off the yoke, when this rebellious portion = 
of her sons turned against the Popes the light of that very philoso- 
phy they had suffered to be kindled, that spirit of liberty they 
had encouraged, and that public opinion which was slipping from 
their grasp and becoming in itself a new power, a feeling of profound 
terror caused them at once to alter their whole line of politics. 
Instead of remaining at the head of the league against monarchy, 
they beheld the necessity of making common cause with them, to 
obtain support against adversaries far more redoubtable. They 
entered into the strictest alliance with temporal princes, particu- 
larly with Philip II, the most despotic of all. Their only occupation 
became to bend the human conscience to their views, and lead cap- 
tive the intelligence of man ; and soon they imposed upon the 
human race a heavier yoke than any yet borne by the groaning 
sons of Adam. 

" The Church seized first hold of the domain of moral ethics as 
being hers of right; she substituted the authority of her decrees in 
the place of reason and conscience, the study of casuists to that of 
moral philosophy, and she replaced by a debasing servitude the most 
noble of all intellectual exercises. 

" Moral philosophy thus became completely distorted and dis- 
turbed in the hands of the casuists; and became estranged from the 
heart as well as from the reason; the distinction between mortal 
and venal offences soon effaced that which the conscience had esta- 
blished between sins of a serious kind, and those easily forgiven. 
Then were beheld upon the same level, side by side; the crime which 
inspires the most profound disgust and horror with the simple 
faults which weakness of human nature will not permit us to 
avoid. 

" The casuists thus delivered up to the most dire execration of 



US 



mankind in the first scale of malediction all heretics and schismatic 
reasoners; sometimes they succeeded in fanning a flame of a most 
bitter hatred against them ; the robber, the assassin, the parricide 
were associated with men to whom involuntary respect was paid 
by the multitude. Tbe good works of heretics threw doubt and 
suspicion upon virtue itself; their domiuation caused reprobation 
to be regarded as a kind of fatality, and the number of criminals 
became so multiplied, that innocence appeared impossible. 

"The doctrine of penitence occasioned another subversion of mo- 
rals * there was consolation, no doubt, in the promise of heavenly 
pardon for repentance; but the casuists deteriorated this doctrine; 
a single act of faith and fervour was proclaimed sufficient to efface 
a long list of crimes. Instead of being the constant effort of life, 
virtue became nothing more than an account with heaven, to be 
settled at the hour of death ; and with this confident assurance 
the sinner was enabled to give loose to the most disorderly passions. 

C( I will say nothing of the shameless traffic in indulgences, and 
of the scandalous price demanded by the priest for the absolution of 
the penitent ; and yet even in our day the priest lives by the sins 
and errors of the people ; the dying man squanders, in the payment 
of masses for his soul, the money which he has often acquired 
by iniquitous means, and thus establishes in vulgar eyes a reputa- 
tion for piety. 

"The power attributed to religious ceremonies, the salvation in- 
dulgences, all combined to persuade the people that eternal happi- 
ness or everlasting torment depended on the absolution accorded 
by the priest, and this was perhaps the most damning stroke of all 
to religion and morality. The man the most perverse by nature, 
the most stained with primes, might experience one of those mo- 
mentary returns to virtue to which the most depraved heart is not 
always a stranger; he might make a worthy confession, a holy 
communion, an exemplary death, and be secure of Paradise. The 
flashes of reason and conscience were for ever extinguished by the 
dictates of theologians. The murderer, all covered with the blood 
he had just spilt, denies himself meat on fast-days with feelings of 
devotion, while he meditates the opportunity of committing a fresh 
murder ; the prostitute places near her bed an image of the Virgin^ 
before which she kneels and tells her beads with fervour. 

fe Charity is the great virtue of the Gospel; but the casuist has 
taught the philanthropist to give to the poor for the benefit of his 
own soul, and not to relieve the misery of his fellow creature; he 
has turned aside, in favour of the begging friar, the funds destined to 



119 

public charity. Sobriety,, chastity, are domestic virtues which pre- 
serve the natural faculties of the individual, and ensure the peace 
of families. The casuist has replaced them by fasting, by flagella- 
tions, and by vigils. . . And, in the midst of all the monkish virtues, 
gluttony and incontinence may take root unheeded and uncon- 
demned. 

" Dog m atical doctor s,armed with all the authority of spiritual and 
temporal power, have forbidden all philosophical research which 
might establish to rules of probity, founded upon any other basis than 
those laid down by their own theories, all discussion of principle, 
all appeal to human reason. Moral doctrines have not only become 
their exclusive science but their exclusive secret. The scrupulous 
believer in Italy must abdicate the first of all human faculties, that 
of studying and learning his duty. He is commanded to forego 
any thought which can mislead him. It would be impossible to 
express the degree to which this ill-directed education has been 
injurious to public morality in Italy. There is not, throughout 
Europe, any people more constantly occupied in religious practices, 
or more strictly attached to their observance. There is not one 
who observes with less regularity the duties and virtues prescribed 
by that Christianity, to which it outwardly appears so devotedly 
attached. Each one has learnt, not to obey his conscience, but to 
tamper with that holy faculty ; benefiting by indulgences can give 
easy play to his passions, and aids them indeed by mental restric- 
tions, and by the prospect of repentance, and the hope of future 
absolution ; and this religious fervour, so far from being a guarantee 
of virtue and honesty, may be regarded as the cloak of sin and looked 
upon with distrust. 

" When the Popes, led by fanaticism, succeeded those who had 
been led by ambition, devotion was placed in the weak hands. 
The Jesuits seized upon all the colleges, and at the same moment 
everywhere ceased the independent education of thousands of 
scholars, who were exercising all their powers of intelligence, awa- 
kening all their faculties, and appealing without fear to the decision 
of thought. The monks who succeeded these men of active intel- 
ligence were enrolled with the severest care; indifferent to the 
success of the schools, and solely occupied with the advancement of 
their order, they denounced all appeal to human reason as a revolt 
against the doctrines emanating directly from the Divinity. It was 
no longer permitted to seek the human heart to find those prin- 
ciples on which authority had already pronounced its judgment; 
all policy was made to conform to the interests of the reigning 



120 



government, and all noble sentiment was banished from a science 
which, naturally the most independent of all, soon became the most 
servile. What could be the value of antique eloquence, when the 
love of liberty was represented as the spirit of rebellion, the love of 
country as an idolatrous worship ? Of what interest could be the 
study of law, of moral philosophy, of the customs of antiquity, 
when they were no longer placed in comparison with the notions 
of a legislation really free, of a morality purified, of customs born 
in the perfection of social order 1 ? 

This quotation might dispense from citing other authorities; 
nevertheless, we will add a few lines from two or three authors : 

" in this one epoch (sixteenth century) dates the decline of Home. 
The Catholic element, passed to the great crucible of the Reforma- 
tion, lost its power, its prestige, and by degrees became excluded 
from the political body ; it ceased to be the bugbear of princes, 
who soon began to shake off its inlluence. By proclaiming the 
principle of individual independence, Luther was preparing a most 
glaring triumph to the popular element left without a means of 
expression 2 . " 

It is well understood that the Vatican has had no temporal power, 
since the day when, improvident renegade, it deserted the cause 
of the people, which was its own. It found itself solitary, without 
support; and was then compelled, in order not to perish, to seek 
other sensations. It proclaimed itself a gibelin, and the champion 
of princes : but, at bottom, it had not renounced its pretension to 
universal dominion. 

" The Holy See has never ceased to increase in power at the 
expense of the political existence of Italy. By the very logic of 
circumstances, it has prevented that country from progressing, like 
every other country in Europe, towards that unity which alone 
could save it from destruction. It has suspended the very breath 
of civil life. It has prevented the development and duration of 
its political state; it has absorbed the vital power of Italy, despoiled 
and trodden down by the whole world ; every one of the great 
centres of political organisation, the league of Lombardy, Pisa, 
Florence, Venice disappears in its turn; the temporal world is 
effaced, it is vanishing before the spiritual. 

"When the work of destruction is accomplished, when nought 
remains of her civil existence; when, in the sixteenth century, 
Italy, effaced from the political mass of Europe, disappears from the 



1. Sismoudi, vol. xvi, p. 109 and following. —2. Didier, p. S-2C 



121 



region of reality to enter into the life of eternal ruin, at that very 
moment Popedom exclaims : Thou art dead, but I will make thee 
still reign ; thou hast been sacrificed to me, but I will triumph 
over the whole world. I have absorbed thy rights, thy entire 
life, thy whole futurity ; in thee nothing shall subsist longer than 
myself ; thou hast consumed thyself wholly for my sake; and now 
during my reign, it is thee who shall be sovereign ; for I will make 
of the whole earth an Italy like unto thee, without thy joyous 
sun and wondrous beauty. The thought of death, which arises 
from thy marshes and thy deserted towns, I will impose likewise 
upon the whole world, and there shall enter a fatal silence as that 
which surrounds thee ; thou shall recognise it for thine own ; thou 
shall find thyself everywhere, and all shall envy thee the death- 
crown which adorns thy brow *. " 

Such was the tree planted, in the sixteenth century, by the la- 
bours of Papacy in the Roman States, and whose roots extend over 
the whole Italian soil. Now, let us examine the nature of the fruit 
which this gigantic tree has brought forth; and when we see se- 
cular governments holding up the theory of divine right, of royal 
authority, of the privileges of race, let us not forget that the pon- 
tifical government had begun by proclaiming the infallibility of 
the Pope, the sovereignty of the Church, and the privileges of the 
clergy; and that, by the transfer of these pretensions from the spiri- 
tual to the temporal reign of power, Papacy itself had prepared every 
species of abuse, and every description of tyranny. 

"Rome," says Sismondi, " who, at the beginning of the century, 
had beheld in Leo X a great pontiff, a friend of literature, and a ge- 
nerous protector of poetry and art, grown suspicious by the progress 
of the Reformation, had now no other pre-occupation than that of 
crushing all spread of thought; and under the reigns of Paul IV, of 
Pius IV, and Pius V (1555,1572), who had risen to power through 
the influence of the Inquisition, the persecution of letters and of 
learned associations was renewed in a regular and systematic 
manner, to be arrested no more 2 . " 

" But the calamities which ushered in the beginning of the 
sixteenth century were less fatal than the death-slumber which 
ensued. A universal oppression, systematic and regular, succeeded 
to the violence of war. It would not be an easy task to make 
known to the reader the government suspicious and apathetic the 
same time of the three Philips, who possessed the sovereignty over 



1. Quinet, p. 58 and 59. — 2. Quinet, vol. n. p. 188. 



422 

the duchy of Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and who exercised 
a rule almost as absolute over the Papal States, and over those of 
the dukes of Italy, who had implored protection at their hands. 
Exorbitant tributes, unequally and absurdly levied, had mined all 
commerce, crushed and depopulated the provinces; internal quar- 
rels, more ruinous by far, had enriched certain governors, while 
the minds of the people werp penetrated with every sentiment of 
hatred and contempt for a system of government at once so blind 
and so unjust. All effort of the human mind was considered an 
attack against the government ; ail liberty of writing or printing 
was forbidden to the subject; all public discussion or deliberation 
was interdicted ; every individual possessing books forbidden by 
these arbitrary regulations exposed himself to the severest penalties, 
both of a civil and religious nature; for the government, in order 
to exercise a more vigilant police, and to extend its power over the 
public mind, had called the Inquisition to its aid, and made it the 
faithful guardian of every species of despotism K " 

V Nothing obtained respect but the vilest abuses ; civil liberty 
was openly violated; men suspected, not of guilty actions but of 
liberal opinions, were exposed to the most painful death not as 
punishment but torture, and notwithstanding there was no admi- 
nistration of justice. Convents and churches served as refuge to 
malefactors ; every petty viceroy, every military commander, every 
agent of the government, maintained an army of banditti under 
his protection, to whom impunity was secured as reward for those 
violent and murderous deeds which they committed by his com- 
mand. The convents themselves had their paid assassins, and, in 
the conspiracy of father Gampanella, the monks of Calabria were 
found capable of arming several thousand of these bandits. The 
robbers encamped themselves almost at the gates of cities, and it 
was impossible to travel without escort from Naples to Caserta or 
Averso 2 . The state of the Church, during the whole of this cen- 
tury, might be compared to a great desert, which no spark of life 
was suffered to cheer or animate 3 . " 

(( The influence of a narrow spirit was found to rule over the 
administration as well as over the actions of their chiefs; the ha- 
bits of a minute espionage, of inquiet distrust, of an obstinate 
aversion for any innovation, was given to every subaltern, and in- 
dividuals were condemned to vegetate in perpetual constraint. 
Public morals had yielded to the corruption of the mode, still 



1. SismOIldi, vol. II, pp. 243, 244, 245. — 2. Idem, pp. 246, 247. — 3. Idem, p. 250. 



423 

more than to that of the passions; a frivolity, become universal, 
seemed to exclude all thought, all warmth of conversation ; the 
constant habit of idleness relaxed the mind ; and rendered it inca- 
pable even of the capability of occupation. The adoption of the 
sigisbes (the authorised lover of the married woman), no less 
debasing to the thought than to the morals, left no time at the 
disposal even of the professed idler, and furnished hourly duties to 
those whose lives were ostensibly without aim or end. Men grew 
accustomed to live without the slightest renewal of ideas, whether 
for action or conversation ; the stoppage of every career, the impos- 
sibility of applying any study to any useful end, had destroyed 
every stimulus to education. The universities, formerly so bril- 
liant, now contained only those whose learning was confined to 
students of theology, medicine, or jurisprudence, with a view of 
acquiring a lucrative profession from these studies. The schools, 
opened in such vast numbers during the fifteenth century, and 
which had produced so many learned men, were all closed, and 
there remained only a few colleges and monastic seminaries, where- 
in the aim of education seemed to be, not to teach, but to repress, 
and where the scholar was taught to subdue his reason, to curb 
his will, to be silent, to dissimulate, to fear, and to obey. The 
nation, in short, was dead in every way 1 /' 

With his vivid imagination, M. Quinet describes, also, this 
sixteenth century in Italy : ff At the present time the Inquisition 
has stifled every semblance of life or motion in Italy. The hang- 
man has just torn out the tongue of Vanini \ Giordano, Bruno, Do- 
minis have been burnt at the stake. Compelled to abjure all theory 
or systematic ideas, what remains to Italy? You answer, expe- 
rience, facts, reality, and, what is invincible with all mankind, 
mathematical science. Well, then, experience and mathema- 
tics are to be condemned, physical science interdicted, geometry 
excommunicated, that it may be proved to the world that if Italy 
is arrested in her progress towards perfection, if she ceases to pro- 
duce, it is because every outlet is closed, and life itself condemned 
to perish for want of renovating care 2 ." 

" The ignorance of the ministers of Madrid, who were unac- 
quainted with the very first elements of political economy, was 
even more fatal to the welfare of Italy than their rapacity and spo- 
liations. They seemed to take to task to invent taxes solely des- 
tined to crush ail industry, and ruin agriculture. Manufactures 



t. SiSHflOndi, Litterature du Midi de l'Europe,\o\. u, pp. 351, 352. — 2. Qllinet, p. 79. 



124 



seemed in their decadence; commerce was disappearing altoge- 
ther; the rural districts of the country becoming deserted; and the 
inhabitants, reduced to despair, were compelled in short to em- 
brace, as the sole profession open to them, that of highway robbery. 
Chiefs of high birth or distinguished talents headed the bands of 
assassins, which became, at the close of the century, organised in 
the kingdom of Naples and in the Papal States, and this war of 
banditti often menaced the power of sovereign authority itself. 
Meanwhile, the provinces remained without defenders, the coast 
without ships, the forts ungarrisoned l . " 

" The duchy of Milan found that all recovery from the disasters 
of the preceding wars would be impossible under the Spanish go- 
vernment. The most absurd imposts were levied, which banished 
all manufactures and commerce, and if the laws could not accom- 
plish the utter ruin of these fertile plains, at all events they ren- 
dered the state of those by whom they were cultivated miserable 
in the extreme. The government seemed to take delight in aug- 
menting the hateful yoke borne by the Milanese by the establish- 
ment of the Spanish Inquisition. The Holy Office of Italy, which 
had been already for many years in full vigour at Milan, was no 
longer deemed sufficient to satisfy the savage fanaticism or the 
policy of Philip II 2 ." 

" The Spanish administration drove both Sicily and Sardinia 
back to barbarism ; it had already scared from the cities all enter- 
prise and commerce ; it had abandoned the fertile plains of those 
countries to the devastations of robbers and smugglers, and had 
left their whole line of coast exposed to the ravages of the pirates 
of Barbary 3 ." 

" For a long time preceding, the Holy See had been filled by men 
whose sole pursuits were directed towards worldly interests, who 
had been successively occupied in satisfying their tastes for plea- 
sure, for the arts, or for magnificence and war. Amongst these, 
some had sought to extend even the sovereignty of the Church ; 
others, on the contrary, had endeavoured to detach from its pos- 
session certain fiefs, in order to aggrandise their families; in each 
and all the statesman had superseded the Churchman, and their 
conduct was but little guided by religious fanaticism. Such was 
the characteristic of Papal dignity during the whole space of time 
between the Council of Constance and the Council of Trent \ " 

" The government of the Popes who succeeded, from the open- 



1. SismOIldi, VOl. XVI, p. 158. — 2. Idem, p. 163. — 3. Idem, p. 170. — 4. Idem , 181. 



125 



ing of the Council of Trent to the end of the century, is found to be 
polluted by the atrocious persecutions exercised by them against 
the Protestants of Italy. The abuses of the Court of Rome were 
more public in that country than in any other ; literature had been 
there cultivated earlier, and with greater care. Philosophy had 
made likewise more rapid progress in the land; and, towards the 
beginning of that century, this philosophy had confronted even 
religious matters with the greatest freedom. The Reformation had 
acquired amongst men of letters numerous partisans in Italy, but 
few amongst those poor and labouring classes by which it had been 
embraced with so much ardour in Germany and France. The 
Popes succeeded in extinguishing the flame in the blood of its 
adherents. The Inquisition, during the whole century, became 
the surest road to the Papal Throne. The Pontiffs ceased not to 
foment the civil wars then raging in France and Flanders, and the 
conspiracies against the Queen of England ; so that the calamities, 
which during the latter half of the sixteenth century overwhelm- 
ed the whole of Europe, may be entirely regarded as their work. 

" The subjects of the Popes, during this second half of the six- 
teenth century, were scarcely more fortunate than those of the 
Spanish Crown. By an equally absurd government, they were 
oppressed to an equal extent, without the experience of the slightest 
degree of protection ; while the most unjust and onerous taxes, 
monopolies of the most ruinous nature, destroyed all germ of in- 
dustry amongst them : the administration of subsistence, violent 
and arbitrary in its nature, by thwarting the commerce of grain, 
became the source of famine, always followed by pestilence. That 
of 1590 and 1591 carried off, m Rome alone, 60,000 inhabitants ; 
many of the richest villages in Ombria remaining from that time 
forwards entirely abandoned. It was thus that desolation and 
ruin were spread over these extensive plains, formerly so fertile, 
and that they became the prey of the malaria. The armed force 
of the State no longer sufficed to protect the citizens against a 
system of robbery regularly organised. Robbers, grown iusolent by 
their strength and numbers, and proud of combatting against the 
shameless government of their country, had ended by considering 
their lawless trade as the most honourable of all. Even the people, 
while suffering of their rapine, applauded their valour, and looked 
upon these bands of outlaws as nurseries for warriors. Numbers 
of ruined nobles, younger sons of princely families, were some- 
times boastful of having served for a while amongst them, and the 
greatest seigneurs placed themselves at the head of these troops of 



126 

banditti, to carry on a regular warfare against the Papal army. 
These brigands, not content with robbing travellers, or hiring 
bravos to all who consented to pay them for the satisfaction of 
private vengeance, often surprised villages, and even small towns, 
for pillage, and compelled the larger burghs to ransom themselves 
by enormous payments from the burning of their suburbs, and the 
devastation of their crops. This custom subsists even in our day, 
and the seigneur is still found sharing secretly in the spoils of the 
same crime. National honour has remained thus perverted, and 
still, in that portion of the Roman States where population has not 
been destroyed (in Sabinia, for instance), the peasant will not 
scruple to unite the trades of robber and assassin to that of tiller 
of the Soil 1 ** 

Let us now advance a step with the progress of the world, and 
we shall see the same state of things renewed : ie The seventeenth 
century in Italy is an era of complete annihilation ; its literary 
history represents it as abandoned to the most corrupt tastes, to 
puerility, and barrenness, while its political annals hold it up to 
contemplation as deprived of all activity, and every public virtue, 
as well as of all elevation of character or important revolution. 
The further we advance, the greater is our conviction that the 
history, not merely of the Italian Republics alone, but of the Italian 
nation itself, was ended with the year 1530. The disasters of the 
seventeenth century were silent misfortunes ; each individual was 
suffering, but suffering in the bosom of his own family ; inter- 
course of private life was embittered ) its hopes destroyed, its for- 
tunes reduced, while its necessities were increasing with each 
day | the conscience of the citizen, instead of sustaining him under 
trial and temptation, reproached him with his weakness, and with 
shame and grief he sought to conceal his misery from the eyes of 
the world, and to avoid its record from extending to posterity. 

" It is this cause which has prevented that, amongst the public 
misfortunes of Italy, the private sufferings of Italian families have 
remained unnoticed. The first of these being the attack upon the 
sacred tie of marriage by the admission of another bond, considered 
honourable, and foreigners always view with undisguised astonish- 
ment, without comprehending it § that is, of the sigisbes, or cava- 
lieri serventi. This fatal custom, having once been introduced in 
the seventeenth century by the example of the courts, and placed 
under the protection of every species of vanity, the peace of fami- 



1. Sismondi, vol. xvij pp. 189 to 193. 



127 



lies was banished from Italy ; no husband dared to regard his wife 
as a faithful companion, hound to his existence ; none could find in 
her either a friendly adviser in doubt, a support under adversity, 
or help in danger, or consolation in despair. No father dared to 
trust that the children bearing his name were really his own \ none 
felt bound towards them by the tie of Nature j and the pride of 
conserving a noble name, replacing the most natural and affec- 
tionate sentiments, embittered all domestic intercourse. What 
heavy crimes against humanity have those princes to answer for, 
who succeeded in depriving their subjects from experiencing the 
tender feelings of the husband, the father, the brother, or the son 1 ! " 

" While all these family ties were being destroyed in the 
seventeenth century by this new state of morals, which, regarded 
by the Court as the only type of elegance and fashion, was soon of 
course adopted by the great mass of the people, the commerce of 
the country received its final blow by the sudden retreat of men of 
enterprise and capital. Its ruin became complete by the monopo- 
lies and by the absurd taxes laid upon the sale of all objects of 
barter established by the Spaniards in every province dependent 
on their rule. Nevertheless, ostentation and magnificence seemed 
to increase in the country, while its resources Were diminishing. 
The Italians acquired, during this century , and it was the Spa- 
niards who taught them the lesson, the art of retrenching from the 
most pressing necessities of life in order to bestow more expense 
upon outward show, and it became a high merit in every head of a 
family to squander large sums upon his vanities or pleasures 2 . " 

" The laws of the country, its morals, its example, its very reli- 
gion itself as it was practised, tended to the substitution in every 
thing of the most hardened selfishness to every more noble incen- 
tive. The father of a family, married to the wife he had not 
chosen, whom he could not love, by whom he was not beloved, 
surrounded by children of whose paternity he was ever doubtful, 
whose education he could not follow^ whose affection he could not 
obtain, constrained without ceasing in his own family by the 
presence of the friend of his wife, separated from those brothers 
and sisters who where doomed from early childhood to a life of 
monastic seclusion, wearied with the uselessness of the others, to 
whom he was compelled to give a seat at his board as their only 
patrimony, was merely regarded as the steward of the family 
property, while every member of that family, whether brother, 

1. Sismoudi, vol. xvi, pp. 220 to 222. — 2. Idm, p. 225. 



128 



sister, wife., or child, combined together, in secret conspiracy, to 
turn aside for their sole benefit all that could be secured from the 
general revenue, in order to enjoy an ease and affluence of their 
own, without a thought or care for the embarrassment in which its 
chief was plunged. 

"For each unforeseen expense, the head of the family was 
compelled to draw upon the fund destined to the improvement of the 
estate, the only resource at his disposal, and the one which ought to 
have been considered as a sacred deposit. He thus became the 
despoiler of the family property, because he had not the right to 
sell it, and numerous families of yeomanry became involved in the 
fatal effects of his own jurisprudence, or of that of his neighbours, 
or of the accidental catastrophe which might have befallen his 
fortunes... If by chance he sought to follow a public career, he 
could only hope for success by cultivating the arts of intrigue or 
adulation, and of the most mean subtility; if he engaged in a 
law-suit, his rights became compromised by the interminable delays 
of legal chicanery, or sacrificed by the venality of his judges; if he 
had enemies, his wealth, his liberty, his very life itself were at the 
mercy of secret perjury, and of the arbitrary administration of 
the tribunals. Loving nothing but himself, and finding nothing 
in himself but pains and cares, he was compelled to seek relief from 
his troubles in the universal rush after sensual delights ; and, by 
abandoning himself to their enjoyment, he prepared for himself 
new miseries and new remorse x . " 

" No single instance could be found of a father who, by his last 
will and testament, hesitated to sacrifice all his daughters to his 
sons, all the younger sons to the eldest, and the widow to the heir. 
Every domestic tie was distorted by this false distribution of pro- 
perty. Filial respect towards the mother was destroyed, when the 
mother was thus rendered dependent upon her own son for subsis- 
tence. Brotherly affection was equally annulled ; for friendship 
exacts equality, and cannot exist between a despotic master and his 
hired parasite 2 . " 

Such, then, were the fruits of the tree planted by Papacy. But 
would it not be possible to grasp it ? To speak without metaphor, 
would it not be possible to extract from the principle of Catholi- 
cism totally different results? Does not evil arise rather from 
mankind itself than from institutions ? No ; on the contrary, there 
have been men good and brave enough to seek to reform this world 



i. Sismondi, pp. 227 to 229. — 2. /dew, p. 457. 



129 

of corruption and iniquity, and they have failed in the attempt. 
Let us enumerate some of these vain endeavours at reform. 

First of all, a vain attempt at Ancona for the preservation of 
liberty : " The sparks of liberty which still were dispersed about. 
Italy went out by degrees in the Papal States. Ancona alone had 
preserved a republican and independent government, until the 
month of August, of the year 1552 ; the little city was in the quiet 
enjoyment of this liberty, when Pope Clement VII gave warning 
to its magistrates that the fleet of Sultan Soliman was advancing 
up the Adriatic, and at the same time offered the aid of a small 
army, commanded by Louis de Gonzague. The people of Ancona 
received without distrust the Papal troops ; who, having got pos- 
session of the outposts, arrested the magistrates, beheaded six of 
their number, disarmed the citizens, built a strong fortress on 
Mount San Siriaco, and wrested from the town all its ancient 
privileges 1 ." 

Another more recent example : " No Italian State has ever owed 
so much to any sovereign, as Tuscany to Peter Leopold. He ap- 
plied himself to reform the abuses which a bad administration of 
two hundred years had introduced ; he simplified the civil laws, 
and mitigated the severity of the criminal ones ; he gave liberty to 
commerce, and by rousing his subjects to habits of activity and in- 
dustry which they had long abandoned, he withdrew whole pro- 
vinces from under water, and doubled agricultural produce. He 
also endeavoured to check the depravity of the manners, and the 
excess of superstition; but his ecclesiastical reforms were strongly 
opposed by the provincial council, convoked by him on the 23 rd of 
April, 1787. The prejudices of the priests, and the vices of the 
people, were in league against a prince who was perhaps too eager 
in his desire to do good 2 . " 

ee But neither the wisdom nor the benevolence of Leopold's ef- 
forts were acknowledged by a large class of his subjects, a class 
composed of all that was interested in the maintenance of the 
abuses he abolished : the priesthood, the noblesse, and the refuse of 
the people. Convents suppressed, religious orders dissolved, licen- 
tiousness reproved, activity called forth, indolence roused from its 
voluptuous slumbers, and reformation universally suggested or 
inposed, excited a powerful enmity and resistance against the royal 
reformer, when, by the death of Joseph the Second, Leopold 
exchanged his dukedom for the throne of an Empire, and the go- 



1. Sismondi, vol. xvi, p. 120. — 2. ld^m. vol. xvi, p. 326. 
T. II. 



9 



130 



vemment of Tuscany lapsed into the hands of his second son. The 
priests and nobles exhibited their joy at this event, in manifesta- 
tions by no means equivocal : they well knew that the example of 
royal fathers holds little influence over their successors, and their 
opinions were amply justified in the event. The young sovereign, 
Ferdinand the Third, became the agent of his then major domo 
Manfredini: and, acting under his auspices, he abolished, amidst 
the plaudits of the rabble, freedom of commerce given by his 
fathers : he impaired that code, the object of admiration to the phi- 
losophical and the benevolent of all countries ; he restored capital 
punishments, and fostered that long-discouraged bigotry, which 
once more raised its drooping head under royal protection l , " 

The same has been the case with Joseph H in Lombardy : i( By 
the people he (Joseph K) was not understood • by the noble and 
the priest he was perfectly comprehended. They saw his aim, and 
combined to turn it on one side, to save their privileges and preserve 
their power. Those of his acts which excited the greatest hostility 
best prove his wisdom and humanity. Such were his decrees of 1781, 
granting the free exercise of worship to the Greek and Protestant 
churches. He founded colleges and libraries where his father had 
raised convents and shrines ; he had the Bible translated into the 
vulgar tongue, hitherto withheld from the knowledge of the people; 
he took the literary censorship out of the hands of the priesthood. 
But what was the result ? And what was the reward of these volun- 
tary elforts of a prince in favour of his long-oppressed people?... 
Joseph the Second, the patriot prince, the patron of letters, died of 
a broken heart; unhonoured by one trophy, unlamented by one 
laureate elegy ! The Pope, the priesthood, the princes and nobles 
of Germany and of Lombardy, united against him; the ignorant 
and bigoted people believed the avowed enemy of their religion. 
In Vienna, under the very windows of the Emperor, the more 
brutal Austrians, in a coarse dialect, exclaimed, ( Let him die! ■ 
or, more literally from the German, ' Let him burst ! ' He expired 
catching to the last these terrible execrations, and suing to be per- 
mitted to die in peace 2 . " 

Tn our own day, another attempt made by a powerful hand has 
met with no better success : "As, by degrees, Napoleon took pos- 
session of the provinces of Italy, one after another, the French 
spirit of reform in the laws and tribunals, the spirit of publicity, 
of equality, of impatience of tyranny, soon manifested itself, and 



1. Lady Morgan, vol. n, pp. 173, 174. — 2. U'em, vol. i, pp. 205 to 207. 



131 



the Republic of Venice could then judge of the detestation it had 
inspired in all who possessed any degree of elevation of soul. In- 
ferior minds, it is true, found only in the lowest classes of peasants 
and workmen governed by priestly influence, and comprehending 
nothing but what is visible, looked upon every French innovation 
with horror. The Senate looked to this party for support, and 
excited its ignorant fanaticism by every means i . " 

" By the entrance of the French into Italy (1796) arbitrary law 
was abolished ; moral and public instruction replaced, at the tri- 
bunals, secret judgments and secret tortures; civil equality had 
taken the place of the feudal system; education, instead of being 
conducted on the former retrograde system , had been urged 
forwards, and the liberty of conscience, both religious and politi- 
cal, had been restituted. The French invasion bore promise to 
awakening Italy liberty, virtue, and glory. The coalition destroyed 
this noble work, and replaced Italy entirely under the yoke of 
Austria, depriving her, with political liberty, of civil and religious 
freedom likewise, and even that of thought itself, corrupting her 
morals, and overwhelming her with the lowest degree of humi- 
liation 2 ." 

" By force of a Papal rescript, dated the 6 th of July, 1816, were 
abolished the magistracy degli anziani, that of the tribunes of the 
people, the tribunal of the Rota, the corporation of the arts, the 
colleges of medicine, philosophy, of civil and canon law, of the 
advocates, the notaries, and even of theology. The national force 
was disarmed; all the ancient faculties, and the government of 
the militia, the administration of tribunals, of studies, of the insti- 
tute, of the sciences, the right of choosing professors and public 
officers, and the right of coining money, were cancelled and anulled. 
By this act of violence, di Roma che minaccia della s'dgno di Dio senza 
temerlo, Bologna is reduced to the same state of servitude as the 
other provinces; and is subject to the laws of the general sove- 
reignty 3 . " 

Thus do we behold that Papacy remains the same throughout 
all ages. Without possibility of reform, all the change to be ex- 
pected from this power is that of change in the means of attaining 
to the same end. Papacy wears the costume of the day ; but it is 
to turn the fashion of the day to its own account. In former times 
it borrowed the temples, the ceremonies, even the beliefs of Pa- 
ganism, to gain over the Pagan nations to its cause, without feeling 



1. Sismondi, vol. n, p. 262. — 2. idem, p. 266, 267.-3, Lady Morgan, vol. n, pp. 42* 43. 



132 



disquieted with fear lest the disguise might render its own nature 
Pagan also. In later centuries, Papacy placed itself at the head of 
the crusades, because, just then, a warlike order stimulated Chris- 
tianity, and it had become a matter of importance for Rome to 
appear to direct the movement, in order to preserve and increase 
her own influence. Later still, this same power has followed in 
the wake of despotic kings, to profit by this very despotism of 
which it has ended by adopting the principle. But throughout 
all these subtle transformations, Papacy has ever remained the 
same : ambitious, selfish, rendering every human interest sub- 
servient to its own advancement; bending to the present without 
breaking with the past ; sharpening for its own usage every arms 
which seemed the most likely to inflict the most mortal wound; and 
then, at the hour of triumph, resuming its insolent dominion, in 
the name of a new principle, distorted to the profit of the ancient 
cause. Popery can never be modified : Popery will ever absorb 
into itself whoever seeks to join it. Let us hear our authors on the 
subject : " It has been the invariable rule of the Church of Rome to 
observe the tendencies of the age in order to appear to direct them, 
while in reality she follows and yields to them, so as to secure the 
great end, ecclesiastical supremacy. Europe, deserted by Papal in- 
stigations during the Crusades, was left to the clergy, who did not 
lose the opportunity to aggrandise themselves. In a more civi- 
lised period, at the time of the renewing of Letters, the clergy 
headed a crusade against ignorance, and when a period of security 
was succeeded by a moment of danger, when the very existence of 
Papacy was compromised, the progress of reform was arrested by 
those faithful champions of error, the Jesuits. More agreeable 
paths presented themselves to the ambition of the clergy, who found 
it safer and more convenient to rule cabinets by means of a con- 
fessor; mysterious agent, who in turn flattered the vices and 
awoke the terrors of his superstitious penitents; kings and 
queens, favourites of both sexes. But when this system was ex- 
hausted, and the revolutionary spirit gained the ascendancy, the 
priest, like another Protius, accommodated himself to the change. 
In Ireland, the threatening position of the Catholic population has 
long been openly countenanced by a clergy, who, at any rate, do 
nothing towards softening the sanguinary barbarity of their man- 
ners, and it is at a time when crime had never been so rife in 
Ireland, that England, with unexampled generosity, lavished her 
resources to relieve the miseries of this country l ." 

1, Revue Britamiqvc) 1848, January, February, pp> 301, 302. 



133 



Thus has Italy remained under the inspiration, if not under the 
empire, of Popery. As in past ages, she has imbibed its very prin- 
ciple : the harvest she is now gathering in with bitterness and tears 
is therefore the fruit of the seed sown during long centuries by her 
religious faith. For fifteen centuries ago has Catholicism conceiv- 
ed, nursed, and educated its own beloved people; it has now 
grown to man's estate at last. Let us see what has become of its 
faith, its government, its morals, its agriculture, its commerce, 
and industry : 

Government. — u The general policy of the petty despots who 
rule the subdivided States of this unfortunate country, is no less 
hostile to its commerce than it is to liberty. But the nullity of 
Italy is part of the religious and moral system which hypocrisy, 
joined to the force of arms, has imposed on mankind; and for the 
present the Italians have nothing to do but to obey 1 . " 

The obscurantism of the sovereign tyrants of Italy does not 
tolerate any work that is not dedicated to the propagation of 
falsehood, and the retrogradation of intellect. The principal 
movement of mind exists in Lombardy; in Florence it stills 
struggles to advance ; in Rome it sleeps. In this last devoted city, 
which for more than two thousand years had forged chains for the 
whole civilised world, there reigns a brutal and entire ignorance 
of whatever passes without its own walls 2 . " 

" It is impossible to conceive a greater combination of hostile 
accidents, operating more successfully against the best interests of 
civilisation, or more perfectly paralysing all intellectual exertion 3 . " 

u The ecclesiastical and civil powers of Rome have the same end 
in view ; to proscribe all idea of independence, and all spirit of 
examination. The Neapolitan clergy have accepted a high office 
in the police, and they display in this political apostleship an into- 
lerance and fanaticism which exceed even the rigours of temporal 
power. The evangelical pulpit is converted into a political one ; 
its anathemas are reserved for the oppressed and suffering people; 
hope is there annihilated, the desire to improve withers, and the 
powers, constituted and maintained by violence, receive the ap- 
proval of the Vatican \ " 

We are about to trace this same spirit on every spot throughout 
Italy. First of all in Piedmont 5 : " The French codes of juris- 
prudence, celebrated for their lucidity, had been received with joy 

1. Lady Morgan, vol. in, p. 113. — 2. idem, p. 148. — 3. Idem, p. 150. — 4. Didier p. 233. 
5. It is an agreeable task for us, at the moment we pen these lines, to observe that Piedmont 
has chosen a better path ; but it is well known also that the adoption of this new course has 
drawn down upon her the most violent opposition on the part of Rome and her clergy. 



134 



in Piedmont and in Savoy ; these provinces might have been 
enabled to preserve them while ceasing to form part of the French 
dominions. They have been replaced by the ancient customs, 
uncertain and contradictory in their nature, which formerly ruled 
the country. The sons inherit, to the exclusion of the daughters. 
All attempt to emigration is punished by fines and degrading penal- 
ties; confiscation of property reduces to beggary the entire family 
of any citizen guilty of crime, or even of any misdemeanour; the 
judges of the tribunals, whose office is revokable at pleasure, deter- 
mine, according to their own wilJ, the amount of expenses in- 
curred by the adversaries ; the royal pardon is even to be bought 
and paid for under the title of royal emolument. In this kingdom 
the system of centralisation is so admirably organised that, says a 
traveller, the government can reconsider the verdict of the judges, 
revoke the free decisions between consenting parties, annul the 
will of a dead subject, and delegate to its own commissaries the 
right of decision in causes wherein the interest of the great and 
powerful are at stake. In criminal trials, neither the accused nor 
his defender are allowed to be present at the examination of the' 
witnesses ; the indictment, the debates, the verdict, are all ren- 
dered in secret; and if, in spite of these overwhelming circum- 
stances against the accused, his innocence is recognised, he is only 
restored to liberty on payment of all the costs of a ruinous and 
sometimes wholly unjust proceeding. 

" The nobles enjoy every favour bestowed by the government; 
they alone can pretend to any advancement in the army; they 
alone are exempted from all the forced taxes, with which all other 
classes are burthened ; they are not amenable to the ordinary tribu- 
nals. A noble, who refuses to acquit himself of debt, can obtain 
from the king the permission to abstain for ten or twenty years 
from payment of the interests of the sums he owes. 

" These facts indicate sufficiently the nature of the Sardinian 
government : it is one of the purest despotism 1 . " 

The Tuscan government is even worse than that of Piedmont : 
<( The President of Police can arrest citizens in their own houses, 
and during the night; and upon suspicion, or on secret informa- 
tion, he can commit them to a house of correction, or force them 
into the military service, as in the case of the discoiato, that is, of 
abandoned immoral conduct, or abstinence from religious duties ; 
a practice the more dangerous to personal liberty, from its execu- 



t, Didier, vol. vu, p. 290, 



138 

tion being committed to the most subaltern agents of the police 1 ; 
The finances of Tuscany far exceed the necessary wants of the State , 
and are chiefly employed for purposes of corruption. 2 " 

But it is at Rome itself that it is of most importance to study the 
government and administration ; for, if the influence of the Pope 
were ever contested over the rest of Italy, its existence could not be 
denied in the city over which he reigns, not only as Spiritual 
Pontiff, but also as temporal and absolute sovereign : " It is not 
enough for Rome, " says M. Briffauft, " to preserve in her bosom 
the barren traditions of her past history ; in every intercourse with 
the governments and peoples of Europe, the Papal Court acts with 
one sole design, that of driving everything back to immobility; for 
Roman power a second nature. Under the inspiration of the Sove- 
reign of the Church, the clergy is influenced by one aim alone, that 
of obtaining admittance into the affairs of the State, in order to 
bring back to Rome the influence thus acquired over the destinies 
of the country. Rome no longer thunders forth, from the summit 
of the Vatican, those anathemas which would now provoke con- 
tempt ; but she is busily occupied in boring subteraneous passages 
beneath all those ideas of progress which impede her views • her 
dark approach is parallel with the march of civilisation visible to 
the eye oi Heaven. Tardy efforts ; and which can succeed no better 
in repairing the rain of her temporal power than her spiritual in- 
fluence, which have acted together to their mutual destruction V 

Nothing is so dark and mysterious as the financial administra- 
tion of Rome; everything is decided by arbitrary rule; every- 
thing is obscure and unknown. The public funds are swallowed 
up and distributed without control. Nobody is ignorant of the 
fact of the commissions bestowed upon prelates and cardinals, for 
the exercise of this surveillance, being a mere matter of form. 
Taxation is unequally distributed. Certain provinces of the 
Apennines, which for the tast twenty years have been paying 
100,003 francs with the Treasury for the construction of roads, 
are still traversed by the most impracticable footpaths. 

" This disorderly management engenders the utmost discontent; 
this discontent requires renewed efforts at repression, these again 
demanding increase of outlay, and already the 4,000 Swiss spread 
throughout the Legations are no longer found sufficient to put down 
the insurrection, which has peopled the dungeons of Fort Saint Leon 
and the other State prisons with miserable captives 4 . " 



1. Lady Morgan, vol. Hi, p. 102. — 2. idem, pp. 113 and 114. — 3. Briffault, pp. 460, 461. 
— 4. Ideir., p. 73. 



130 



ee As Frenchmen, our existence is not without its charm. We 
are recherche at Rome, we are welcomed with pleasure, not in the 
higher regions of society, nor yet amongst the clergy, where our 
liberalism and philosophy become motives of dislike and dread, but 
in the middle classes. But, 1 repeat, Rome is a focus of pestilence, 
which breathes corruption to the strongest natures, to the most 
up light hearts 1 ." 

" The Italian races possess a degree of subtility which leads 
them involuntarily towards the darkest manoeuvres. The perfec- 
tion to which was carried in Venice the art of espionage and de- 
nunciation is well known to all. The annals of the Republic are 
filled with these mysterious horrors. The other States of Italy 
adopted, from a natural taste, the morals and the mask of Vene- 
tian policy. Rome was the first to follow in this tortuous path, 
and her domestic annals are filled with these sombre and disloyal 
traditions. The police of Rome extended far beyond the precincts 
of the Holy City. By means of the religious orders submitted to 
its power and discipline, the Holy See was enabled to penetrate 
into the secrets of the laws, and the feelings of the people. The 
confessional of every Catholic monarch found its corresponding echo 
beneath the dome of the Vatican. 

(( At Rome, almost every member of the government acts with 
the police, not exactly as a profession, but in order to earn a little 
in their leisure moments, and add to their means of existence. 
The whole Church, from the humblest official of the Sacristy up to 
the members of the Sacred College, is enrolled in this new species 
of militia. The revelation of secrets and surveillance form part 
of the oath imposed upon the priests. Flanked by the religious 
communities, the clerical agencies, and the army of devotees, this 
vast aggregation becomes complete. The army itself is associated 
with the system. Another portion of the Roman population takes 
a share in its operations, that is, the crowd of mendicants, robbers, 
and courtezans so numerous in Rome ; the domestics likewise, the 
ciceroni, and all that multitude whose existence of chance and 
adventure is attached to that of the foreign visitors of the city; 
every element of power and of shame contained in Rome is attached 
to the police. Fortunately, in that pursuit, as in all otters in 
that country, activity is paralysed by indolence 2 . " 

" Upon the Popish territory, " says M. Didier, " things are not 
examined so closely ; a few galerians obtain by special favour of his 



l. Biiffault, p. 100, — 2. Idem, pp. 103, 106. 



137 



Holiness the privilege of not performing any labour, and they pass 
their time in the delights of an eternal far niente. The famous 
bandit Gasperoni was amongst this number. Tired of the bri- 
gand's life, and wishing, as he said, to withdraw from business, 
he had offered to lay down his arms, upon the sole condition of 
having his life spared. The Papal government accepted this capi- 
tulation. Gasperoni held a species of court, and received innume- 
rable visits in his prison. He loved to recount his exploits, as a 
general loves to talk of his campaigns; and I have heard him boast 
of having committed five-and-forty murders. The gaolers profess- 
ed the highest esteem for him. For them and for the prison- 
ers, he was the greatest hero of the day : such are the morals of 
this country 1 ." 

But let us pause no longer to depict the government of such and 
such Italian country. What we have said successively of Pied- 
mont, of Tuscany, and of the Roman States, M. de Sismondi will 
confirm with regard to the whole of Italy : " Despotism need 
seek for no disguise in Italian legislation; a Sovereign power, a 
power without limit, is the attribute of a Prince. There is no 
right, however sacred, which is not subject to his supreme will. 
The laws are simple emanations of the wish of the monarch ; the 
verdicts of the tribunals, whether in civil or criminal cases, may 
be reversed by his decree. For one, he may suspend the pursuit 
of creditors ; for the other, he can order the restitution in integrum 
of the privileges forfeited by judgment; he can legitimise a third, 
who may be a bastard, in order to entitle him to a share of his father's 
inheritance, to the prejudice of his brothers and cousins; he may 
abrogate, in favor of a fourth, the obligations of primogeniture, that 
he may dispose of the estates which are entailed upon the children. 
The privileges of corporate bodies present no greater barrier to his 
will than those of individuals, and he can change at his own plea- 
sure, and for his own particular purpose, the customs of cities and the 
prerogatives of their divers orders of citizens. And by the same rule 
that everything depends upon the sole will of the Prince , every- 
thing is accomplished by that will alone, without debate, without 
public discussion, and without the concurrence of the nation in a mat- 
ter which may concern its most important interests. To criticise or 
condemn any system of policy adopted by the government, would 
be considered a punishable offence. Even the study of modern 
history is forbidden; it leads to the temptation of pronouncing a 



1. Didier, p. 23. 



138 



judgment upon matters considered too lofty for the comprehension 
of the people. 

u In countries where the trials of criminals take place in public, 
each trial becomes a high and solemn lesson for the multitude. 
The individual learns thence that the crime committed, in secret 
and solitude, far from human eye, becomes nevertheless matter of 
inquiry and search, He learns that the public justice watching 
over him is benevolent, enlightened, and refrains from punishing 
until the crime is clearly proved. But, where the trial is secret, 
accompanied by no pleading, no debate which admits the public 
to a criticism of the verdict, all agree to behold in the administra- 
tion of justice nothing more than a power of persecution, and odious 
authority ; a league is established to rescue culprits alike from its 
grasp, and public opinion brands with infamy all those who con- 
tribute in any way whatever to its fulfilment. This league against 
the accomplishment of justice has been found throughout the 
whole of Italy. 

" The profession of an officer of the tribunals, an agent of 
police, or a sbirri, is pronounced infamous, and it will be readily 
understood that men who consent to be called by a name which is 
covered with ignominy have no scruple in committing actions 
whereby the contempt with which they are visited may not be un- 
deserved. The honest citizen will blush to be suspected of having 
any intercourse with the bargello, or to have received from that 
officer any service whatever ; although every citizen feels that his 
reputation, his liberty, his life, are at any hour dependent upon 
the secret testimony of this officer. Every individual is liable to 
be arrested at night, torn from his home, bo and in chains, tran- 
sported to a great distance, by the single authority of this man, who 
is not bound to account for his proceedings to any other than to the 
Minister of Police, or President of the buon governo. Italy is the 
only country in the world where legal infamy, far from being in- 
compatible with power, has become a requisite condition for the 
exercise of a certain authority. 

i( An Italian, of whatever rank he may be, if he has not entirely 
lost all sense of reputation, will never assist in giving up a malefac- 
tor into the hands of justice. An impudent robbery, a frightful 
murder, may be committed in the public streets; the crowd, instead 
of arresting the criminal, will make way for him to escape, and 
cJose against the sbirri who are in pursuit. The witness, interro- 
gated concerning a crime committed before his eyes, takes offence 
at being made to answer like a spy. So great is the feeling of 



139 



compassion towards the criminal, so universal the suspicion con- 
cerning the justice of his judges, that the tribunals seldom dare to 
brave this sentiment by pronouncing a capital condemnation. The 
criminal gains nothing, however, by this apparent leniency; he 
either lingers for long years in prison, or he is banished to some 
unhealthy provinces, where malaria executes slowly, and with 
pain, the sentence which the j udge has not dared to pronounce, 
while the example of the punishment which follows crime is lost 
to the people. 

" Over almost the whole of Italy, the decision of all cases, whe- 
ther civil or criminal, is abandoned to the single judge. It is 
evident that the purity of justice must be compromised by confiding 
its administration to the hands of a single individual, who must by 
this universal authority lose all means of distinguishing between 
his private affections, his passions, his prejudices, and the opinions 
he may form in his capacity of public officer. The adverse parties 
brought before him are subjected to the effects of his ill-humour, 
his impatience, and he is deprived of that salutary restraint imposed 
elsewhere by the necessity of declaring before his colleagues the 
motives which have led him to this or that opinion. 

ec Again, the accused party is taught to regard himself as most 
fortunate when this unique judge, before whom he is summoned, 
receives his defence at a regular tribunal ; for, whenever the accuser 
happens to be a person possessing credit or influence with the buon 
governo, the Minister of Police transmits to the vicar or to the bar- 
gello the order to plead per via economica. Iu these trials, known 
as economici or camareli, the defence of the accused is not admitted. 
The accusation is not communicated to him • he does not even know 
the alleged proofs against him, he has but the chance of guessing 
the nature of the complaint, from the questions of his interrogatory, 
in the case where he is interrogated. The reasons for the sentence 
pronounced against him are not given. 

"Thus, in Italy, the salutary effect which the due administration 
of justice ought to produce upon the moral feelings of the people 
has been completely lost , and a contrary effect has arisen in the 
minds of the greater number. Every subject, trembling before an 
anthority which is not accountable for its actions, submitted to no 
law, believes himself to be surrounded for ever with secret spies ; 
he has no faith in the purity of his own conscience, and he is 
forced to accustom himself to dissimulation and flattery ; even by 
committal of murder he will not forfeit either the esteem of his 
friends, or the sanctuary afforded by the churches, or the asylum 



140 



presented by the frontiers of the numerous petty States into which 
Italy is divided; and certainly no country, with the exception of 
Spain, has ever been sullied by so many unpunished murders. 
To all these causes of the general immorality must be added the 
ferocious habits induced almost down to the present day by the 
public spectacle of torture 1 . " 

M. de Lamennais enters even more freely into the subject, by 
impressing upon us the necessity of seeking the cause of the cor- 
ruption of these secular governments in the corruption of eccle- 
siastical power : " The evil which Catholicism suffers most 
deeply, and which threatens its daily existence more and more, 
has its root in the ecclesiastical organisation of the temporal power, 
and the abolition of the ancient franchises, maintained by Cardinal 
Gonzalvi, when Pius VIT recovered his throne. Hence the impa- 
tience with which the people support what is called the priestly 
administration. The priests, on the other hand, feeling them- 
selves hated by the people, attribute this feeling to the new opi- 
nions, the maxims of liberty; and, instead of having recourse to a 
wise reform in the politics of government, throw themselves 
headlong into the doctrines of despotism, seeking support in brute 
force alone, and, worse than all, in the force borrowed from the 
foreigner. One is very much struck in Italy with the mollesse, 
the apathy, the coldness, the indifference, and in one word with 
the absence of life, exhibited in the clergy; its members live by 
their profession, and that is all; they bend to the caprice of the 
sovereign ; they consecrate their pretensions under the name of 
conscience ; they become, in short, the blind instrument of his 
politics, let them be of what nature they may. Two things con- 
tribute to precipitate the clergy of Italy into this dangerous abyss; 
the first, consisting in the education given to the priesthood, the 
prejudices imbibed in youth, and the degrading yoke which pro- 
duces an utter extinction of all intelligence; the second, because the 
clergy, without examining the real motive of the animosity against 
the Church, thinking to serve God by serving every species of 
despotism, alienates the hearts of the people from religion and its 
ministers. A great number of men have conceived the most un- 
conquerable aversion towards the priesthood, and in order the 
better to draw away from the priests, they yield to impiety; hating 
the clergy with all the love they bear to their country 2 . " 

" It is painful to avow it, but there is nothing to guarantee good 



1. Sismondi, vol. xvr, p, 409. — 2. Affaires de Rome, Lamennais, pp. 223 to 226. 



141 

administration (in the estates of the Pope), with authorities who 
are for the most part irresponsible, invested with unlimited privi- 
leges, and surrounded by a crowd of greedy underlings who take 
advantage of the ignorance of their masters. The unfitness of these 
functionaries is inevitable in an administration where the mem- 
bers are forced upon the Pope, and who are, besides, taken from 
among the clergy, thus excluding all administrative study, theo- 
retical or practical. A canon becomes treasurer-general, a cardinal 
directs the war department, a bishop fills the office of the State, 
and is occupied with Government details. Such are the superior 
functionaries; and those who direct the secondary branches of the 
administration are no better, for who are they? monsignori sud- 
denly transformed into jurists, economists, financiers, etc. To 
these agents of intrigue we must add, alas ! recruits from the other 
sex. The influence of women is not surprising in a State where 
the celibacy of the priest cannot be scrupulously observed by those 
who only see in their ordination a door to ecclesiastical honours V 

Let us now examine the influence of the Papal government in 
its very inertness, in the midst of its inaptitude for action, when 
it would become a duty to exhibit some tokens of life and power : 

" Italy/' says M. Quinet, " has for the last century and a half 
followed the counsels of the Church. She is descending to the 
grave as fast as a nation can sink thither. She suffers herself to be 
struck deeper down by all who choose to visit her. A contrat 
social is forming between the Romish Church and Italy ; the former 
holding out to the latter the universal supremacy of the mind, to 
compensate her ruin. If the bargain is accepted, her ruin is com- 
plete; the aim is not achieved, and Popery, false to its promise, sits 
down unrepentant amidst the universal death which extends from 
Calabria to the Alps. 

" It is impossible to witness a spectacle of this nature without 
extracting from it some useful lesson, at least for ourselves. The 
whole catastrophe takes its source in one general cause, which is, 
without a doubt, the secret contempt which the Church of Rome 
entertains for every species of nationality. For centuries she 
beheld, without a murmur, the dissolution of Italy; in our day, 
she has witnessed with the same indifference the fall of Poland. 
Perhaps a single appeal from the Vatican might have saved that 
ill-used country, but the idea of that appeal never arose, or it 
would have shook the whole of Europe. So far from anticipating 



1. Revue Britannique, 1846, July and August, pp. 135, 136. 



142 



the awakening liberties of Greece, M. de Maistre dared to declare 
that the greatest evil which could happen to that country would be 
its escape from bondage ; such calculation of indifference evidently 
belongs to a general principle K " 

" Does the Church of Rome, in compliance with the duties of 
her mission, plead for the weak against the strong ? Did she re- 
member Ireland, or Greece, or Bohemia, or Hungary, or any of the 
oppressed, when a word from her lips, falling amid the plenipo- 
tentiaries of Vienna, might have wrought a change in the destinies 
of these neglected countries? Ask her not for attention on such 
matters ; her eyes are fixed on one single spot of earth ; she is 
thinking of Romagna. At least, will you say, she must be pleading 
for those whom she cannot forget ; for the vanquished. On the con- 
trary, she beholds Catholic France overcome, she seizes the oppor- 
tunity of insisting with the heretic powers for their aid in tearing 
away a province from France, and to bestow it upon her ! 

Ci It is schismatic zeal alone which prevents the outrage ! Thus, 
she beholds the Samaritan Jew lying wounded by the roadside ; 
not only does she refuse all aid and succour, not only does she deny 
him consolation, but she is influenced by one idea alone, that of 
despoiling him of his property. 

' ' Has there ever been an instance, amid all the greedy straggles 
of victorious princes, of the Prince of the Church having sought to 
overpower the debates of ambition by one of those sublime effusions 
of universal charity, which would have rendered her in one mo- 
ment the great moral influence ? Has she ever taken advantage 
of that elevation of soul, of that magnanimity which naturally 
follows on victory, to remind victorious princes of their oaths 
towards their people? Such, assuredly, ought to have been her 
task. The prince of schism, the Emperor Alexander, has some- 
times flashed forth with a ray of grandeur of this nature. No such 
ray has been beheld to emanate from Rome. 

" Upon the last agitation of the rights of men, was it Rome who 
proposed the abolition of slavery, and the penalty of death for po- 
litical offences ? Questions such as this are agitated in the uni- 
versal conscience, but the Universal Church thinks not of this. At 
all events the cry of blood restores her to her mission ? When the 
political scaffold is erected in the midst of perishable passion, does 
Rome send forth her appeal in the name of Eternal mercy? Has 
she ever stood between the scaffold and impassioned humanity, 



1 . Quinet, p. 210. 



143 



when irritation had produced the blindness of partiality? Ney, 
Murat, all the brave heroes of that day, pursued by the rage of the 
victors, did they find refuge in Rome ? By extending her hand 
towards them, did she even spare to their judges the eternal regret 
of their condemnation? No. In the midst of all, Rome beheld 
nought but Rome, and France can never forget this l . 

iC I have already said that Rome denies all nationality; and, 
moreover, that she holds it in distrust. Observe what is taking 
place in Catholic Europe ; you will soon find out the important 
fact that everywhere the Church suspects the people, that she 
aspires but to a separation, and to look for support to Rome alone. 
There was no need of any public avowal to teach the world that in 
France the Gallican Church has no existence but in name. 

" In Spain, where the clergy had ever been so profoundly incor- 
porated with the nation, every voice re-echoes the one great cry — 
Rome. The Bishop of Canary, in a work he has just published, 
places the newly-acquired liberty of the Spanish Church under the 
absolute dependence and servitude of Rome. This prelate, a man 
of real merit, incapable of wearing a mask of liberty, betrays the 
secret of the ecclesiastical coalition when he pronounces a word 
which none would dare to repeat: f No man can doubt/ says he, 
'that the French Revolution is the work of hell/ In Germany, 
Goerres, in the name of the Bavarian clergy, echoes the sentiment 
expressed by the Bishop of Canary. It may be said that at the 
present moment every Catholic clergy of the South and of the 
North of Europe is occupied in divesting with violence the nations 
of which they have charge of those national characteristics whence 
they hitherto drew their best defence, and that they are concentrated 
in Rome to combat together with each of their respective nations 
against the spiritual unity of the nineteenth century in general 2 . " 

u In this duel which has thus been established between the 
Church and the people, supposing that Rome may have thus lost 
the nationalities of Europe, has she at all events preserved the sup- 
port of general humanity? The malcontents will unite, say you : 
and what security have I? What ! Without a single step on your 
part, the half of Christendom, which has deserted you, will be likely 
to amend its ways, and without any help from yourself enable you 
to accomplish in your old age a task to which you were unequal in 
the hot day of your youth? Besides, where do you perceive the 
indications of such a movement? Where are the recanting nations 

1. Qllinet, pp. 220 to 222. — 2. Idem, pp. 240, 241, 



144 



who are turning back towards you? I behold them, on the con- 
trary, marching forwards with heads bent down towards the future, 
from which I must conclude them to be seeking elsewhere than in 
you supreme and universal reconciliation ; and all that I can express 
is a fear that, in your immutability, you will remain isolated from 
the nationalities of the human race, as well as from human nature 
itself 1 ." 

Such is the spirit of Romish legislation. We are ready to anti- 
cipate from it what is to be expected from the morals we are about 
to study : 

Morals. — The better to study the morals of Italy, let us examine 
one single city at the four extremities of the country, beginning by 
the metropolis of Catholicism : " In Rome, life seems composed of 
one long Lenten-time, so punctual is every one in the execution of 
the outward duties of religion. This great city, which might be 
made to contain with ease three times the number of inhabitants 
now gathered there, possesses a sad and deserted aspect, rendered 
more striking by its spacious squares, width and emptiness of its 
streets, the numbers of ecclesiastics met with at every turn, and the 
majestic ruins which greet us at every step. Even in the markets 
we are struck with the same air of stillness. But this silence is 
suddenly exchanged at the time of the Carnival for the most boiste- 
rous manifestations of delight. Rome seems no longer the same 
city, so great is her acquired activity ; all ranks are confounded , 
the churches are deserted, and the streets contain with difficulty the 
population in pursuit of pleasure. During this time of folly we 
behold young abbes, great magistrates, sometimes even prelates, 
clothed in masquerade costume, and running after adventures 
which never fail, for both sexes are in the same pursuit, fully per- 
suaded that a moment of error will be easy of expiation by the 
penitence and holy self-denial of Lent. The Corso becomes the 
rendez-vous of a tumultuous crowd, the equipages follow each 
other in endless files, the balconies are covered with, rich hangings, 
a shower of sweetmeats fall amongst the passers-by, and deafening 
shouts arise from the dense crowd of maskers of every grade. At 
a given signal, the Corso is cleared in the midst ; a troop of horses 
without riders, urged forward by pieces of metal garnished with 
spikes, and by a lighted match barbarously introduced beneath the 
skin, start from the Piazza del Popolo, and rush through the Corso 
with the speed of lightning, less eager to win the race than to fly 

i. Quiuet, p. 241, -242. 



from the instruments of torture which pursue them . To the follies 
of the Carnival, which call to mind the lupercali of Ancient Rome, 
succeed, on the night of Shrove Tuesday, the moccoleldi, small 
lighted tapers, of which every one carries a bundle, and attempts to 
extinguish that of his neighbour. This custom is evidently a rem- 
nant of the festival held in honour of the search of Ceres after her 
daughter Proserpine. 

" Clandestine marriages meet with no opposition : a permission 
to marry, says an author, is delivered by the vice-regent with as 
much facility as a passport, and with this passport the priest of the 
parish gives immediately the nuptial benediction. At Rome, the 
seducer of innocence is condemned to marry the young girl, or to 
pass five years at the galleys. 

" The Church condemns usury; but at Rome she allows the car- 
dinals to practise in secret certain mercantile speculations upon 
objects of daily necessity. The bakers and grocers are often no- 
thing more than the mere agents of the cardinals. Those agents 
who would seek to trade on their own account would be exposed to 
every species of vexation. Elsewhere, the agents of the government 
tax the price of bread, in order that the people may not pay too 
high a price : at Rome, the baker is fined who sells it too cheaply. 
In most of the countries of Europe the immorality of the lottery 
system has been recognised : at Rome, this fatal tax, levied on 
ignorance and superstition, is sanctioned by the ministers of reli- 
gion ; and in the presence of the different heads of congregations, 
and of the cardinals themselves, the prizes are drawn with great 
solemnity. The child who places his hand in the wheel of fortune 
only does so after making the solemn sign of the cross; and yet 
the Church forbids all games of chance. 

i( At Rome, during the follies of the Carnival, and even before 
the entrance of the theatres, the public executioner is seen walking 
up and down near the cavaletto , an instrument of punishment 
destined for to chastise the turbulence of joy which may overstep 
the license permitted on these days of festival, or the denizens of 
the parterre of the theatre who may choose to disturb the represen- 
tations going on within. The culprit is laid upon this little wooden 
horse, and receives a certain number of blows with a stick. The 
same chastisement awaits the restaurateur who dares to serve to his 
guests during Lent any dish forbidden by the Church. For any 
misdemeanour of a graver kind, the law inflicts the punishment of 
the estrapade, which consists in raising by a cord the limbs of the 
culprit, whose hands are tied behind his back, and in causing him 

T. II. 10 



146 



suddenly to fall upon his feet ; but this punishment, as well as the 
cavaletto, are falling into disuse. The assassin who has struck a 
priest has his throat cut, and his body is cut into four parts, exposed 
in four quarters of the town. This mode of execution still pre- 
vailed during the reign of Leo XII. It was under this Pope that the 
first administration of the law began to be carried on in the lan- 
guage of the country instead of Latin, as had been the custom until 
then. Torture has been abolished for a long time past H " 

"The Romans, and in general every subject of the Pope, are 
remarkable for their superstition. They are scrupulous in their 
fulfilment of the outward forms of religion ; but, upon this point, 
the rule is observed rather than true devotion. Confession is a 
practice which every one observes more from habit than from 
Christian humility ; rather to shelter conscience, than for the cor- 
rection of vices. A young beauty will give an assignation to her 
lover in the church ; but, even were she to find herself alone with 
him in that place, she would neither speak to him, or look at him, 
before she has finished every bead of her rosary. The people 
receive the Pope's benediction on bended knee ; but it is not at Rome 
that the head of the Church is looked upon as participating of the 
Divine attributes; what he gains in temporal power, he loses in 
spiritual authority. When the week succeeding Easter is past, the 
priests exact from their parishioners certificates of communion, 
under penalty of publication of the defaulter's name ; no matter in 
what belief the sick man may die, his body, when carried to the 
church, will create no scandal ; provided he has paid, he will be 
received with all the honours reserved by religion to all Christians 
after death. 

" It is useless to speak of the sigisbes, or cavaliers servants; 
they enjoy as much credit at Rome as in every other great city of 
Italy. During the occupation by the French, the ridicule thrown 
upon these gallants had greatly injured their calling; but public 
morals gained nothing by this measure ; amorous intrigue had re- 
placed this species of contract entered into by the husband with the 
lover he has chosen for his wife. Foreigners who have studied 
Rome for a little while past agree that upon this point the old 
fashion is revived : this is a natural consequence in a country where 
education has done nothing for the regeneration of the people. 
A government wholly pacific, like that of Rome, might console 
itself for its political nonentity in the protection given to literature, 



1. Malte-Brun, vol. vit, p. 364. 



147 



science, and art ; but the slumber is universal. Science is less 
cultivated in Rome than throughout the whole of Italy ; notwith- 
standing this, that city which contains such a fund of archaeological 
treasure has produced antiquaries worthy of comparison with those 
of France and Germany. If her literary academies enjoy but little 
fame, and are placed upon a level with the most obscure of our 
provincial academies, it is the censure by which they are restrained. 
The Roman school of painting no longer reckons a single name 
worthy of the bright days of Italy; and, were it not for the chefs- 
d'oeuvre with which the city abounds, the Academy of the Fine 
.Arts might have been established elsewhere. The only art in 
which the Romans excel is in that of mosaic. 

" In the higher classes of society, ignorance and idleness are as 
general as at Venice. The young men who read confine their stu- 
dies to the lightest poems of Voltaire ; the women, who seek com- 
pensation for the time passed in convents, give themselves up to the 
most frivolous and dangerous studies. The people of the city can 
read and write, but these qualifications are very rare in the 
country V 

After the geographer, let us listen to the traveller : " Here 
(Rome) everything is formed to charm the antiquary's eye, and 
feast the poet's fancy ; but it is no less calculated to sicken the 
heart of mere humanity, and to dissipate the philanthropic dream 
of benevolent philosophy. Here is no resting-place for hope of 
man's amendment, of the diminution of his sum of suffering, his 
mass of error ; all here is monumental of his folly, or his crime ; 
his credulity, or his imposture. The temples of Romulus and 
Remus now serve the turn of Saint Cosimo and Theodore ; and the 
games celebrated in the Coliseum in one age, to reduce the people to 
their original ferocity, are succeeded by rites instituted in another 
to enfeeble and degrade them 2 ." 

"The avenues which lead to Saint John de Lateran have no pa- 
rallel in the history of desolation. A long and spacious street 
presents itself uninhabited ; or if here and there a worn and squa- 
lid visage exhibits its sharp and shrivelled features through the 
shattered framework of a sashless window, it does but add a trait 
of moral desolation to the material dreariness, and prove that these 
high and mouldering edifices, once the abode of the powerful and 
luxurious, now serve as dens to house the lowest and most abject. 
In this spot the malaria reigns undisputed by human population 



1. Malte-Bran, vol. vii, p. 369. — 2. Lady Morgan, vol. m, pp. 244, f>45. 



(its most efficient opponent), whose ranks, thinned by the institutes 
of the Church, are daily lessening ; and yet, but a very few centu- 
ries back, it was chosen for its salubrity as the residence of Popes 
and cardinals. This desert of walls terminates in a spacious, si- 
lent, moss-grown square, in the centre of which towers that mass 
of sumptuous and ponderous architecture, the Church and Palace 
of the LateranV' 

" It (Church of Saint Peter's) should be approached by pilgrim- 
steps, slow and difficult ; and that great temple : 

" Where majesty, 
Power, glory, strength, and beauty, aii are aisled, V 

should be reached on foot, and sought through those various details 
of misery, disorder, and degradation, which distinguish alike all 
its avenues, and are the elements out of which its grandeur sprang. 
Around the other great Basilica of Rome there reigns a saddening 
region of desolation ; and Saint Paul's and Saint John de Lateran 
rise on the dreary frontiers of the infected deserts they dominate, 
like temples dedicated to the genius of the malaria. But the 
approach to Saint Peter's has another character; every narrow 
avenue is thickly colonised with a race of beings marked by traits 
of indigence and demoralisation : and every dark dilapidated den 
teems with a tenantry which might well belong to other purlieus 
than those of the Church. It is thus that the altars of Saint Peter's 
are approached. Here the streets of the filthiest city in Europe 
are found filthiest ! Here forms on which Love has set his seal 
are equally disfigured by the neglect of cleanliness, or by meretri- 
cious ornament; and the young plebeian beauty, lying on the 
threshold of some ruinous fabric, withdrawing the bodkin from 
tresses it is dangerous to loosen, and submitting a fine head to the 
inspection of some ancient crone, smiles on the passing stranger 
with all the complacency of a Bu Barry, when she made her toilet 
for the good of the public, surrounded by the dignitaries of the 
Church, who emuiously canvassed for its services. The streets 
leading immediately to Saint Peter's occasionally exhibit a spacious 
but dilapidated palace, mingled with inferior buildings ; but many 
even of these have their facades of marble disfigured by washer- 
women's lines ; and an atmosphere of soap-suds indicates an atten- 
tion to cleanliness, whose effects are nowhere visible in Rome but 



t. Lady Morgan, vol. in, pp. 202, 263. 



149 

in the stench which issues from the laundresses' windows in the 
very finest of its streets 1 . " 

" The cardinals governed by cabal, and all places were disposed 
of through their mistresses and their laquais ; a class only less 
powerful than the cardinals themselves. The princes and patri- 
cians (and they were of two descriptions) rich, idle, ignorant, and 
avaricious, were surrounded by dependants and parasites, the indi- 
gent followers of rank and opulence, a numerous order in all iii- 
govemed countries. The people, without domestic habits, lived 
like the commoners of nature, satisfied if bread and church ceremo- 
nies sustained life and amused it. Dependence was encouraged by 
pride, poverty preached as a virtue, and followed as a profession. 
The parasite came after the prince, and the beggar after the saint. 
The women of all ranks, divided into vestals and concubines, were 
either shut up in a convent, or let loose upon society free from the 
duties of maternity and the ties of marriage, the mistresses of au- 
thorised paramours, and the wives of other women's lovers. The 
passions of all classes were unsubdued by education, unrestrained 
by law, and all crimes were redeemable by power. Murder had 
its price, from a basket of figs to a purse of gold ; and the murderer 
his asylum, from the high altar of the church to the cabinet of the 
palace. 

" Assassination was a deed of nightly occurrence; and the care- 
less hand that stabbed for pay not unfrequently mistook its aim, 
and stopped to excuse its error by assuring the victim £ it was a 
mistake. 3 

u There was no society but such as vice congregated ; the interests 
of the gaming-table, or the intrigues of illicit love. To the former 
all were devoted, and to forward the latter husbands frequently 
assisted their wives to get rid of troublesome sigisbes, whose interests 
interfered with a passion more profitable to the menage than that 
of the professed ancient cavaliere servente 2 . 99 

" That it (Rome) has fallen is the work of despotism and corrup- 
tion ; and that, like the rest of Italy, it may never rise again from 
its fearful debasement is the hope and effort of Allied Sovereigns, 
their cabinets and their dependents 8 . 93 

Let us turn from contemplating the moral miseries of Rome to 
the less repulsive study of the temporal ones of Genoa; which 
come next in order : "I never in my life was so dismayed. The 
wonderful novelty of everything, the unusual smells, the unaccount- 



1. Lady Morgan, vol. in, pp, 272, 273, -274. — 2.\Jdcm, pp, 403, 404, 405, — , g, p.3$0y 



150 



able filth (though it is reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns); the 
passages more squalid and more close than any in Saint Giles's, or 
old Paris : in and out of which not vagabonds, but well-dressed 
women, with white veils and great fans, were passing and repass- 
ing i the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay perfectly con- 
founded me. The court-yards of these houses (great villas), are 
overgrown with grass and weeds; all sorts of hideous patches cover 
the bases of the statues, as if they Avere afflicted with a cutaneous 
disorder ; the outer gates are rusty ; and the iron bars outside the 
lower windows are all tumbling down. Hard by there is a large 
Palazzo, formerly belonging to some member of the Brignole fa- 
mily. I doirt believe there was an uncracked stone in the whole 
pavement. In the centre was a melancholy statue, so piebald in 
its decay, that it looked exactly as if it had been covered with 
sticking-plaster, and afterwards powdered. The stables, coach- 
houses, offices, were all empty. Doors had lost their hinges, and 
were holding on by their latches ; windows were broken, painted 
plaster had peeled off, and was lying about in clods. I went down 
into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint, with avenues, 
and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and water in stone 
basins; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy, straggling, under- 
grown or overgrown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of slabby, 
clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life. There was nothing 
bright in the whole scene but a firefly, showing against the dark 
bushes the last little speck of the departed glory of the house. 
Genoa abounds in the strangest contrasts ; the rapid passage from a 
street of stately edifices into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming 
with unwholesome stenches , and swarming with half-naked 
children and whole worlds of dirty people, make up altogether 
such a scene of wonder, so lively and yet so dead, so noisy and yet 
so quiet, that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and 
on, and look about him. One of the rottenest-looking parts of the 
town, I think, is down by the landing wharf. Before the base- 
ments of the houses is an arcade over the pavement; very massive, 
dark and low, like an old crypt. The stone or plaster of which 
it is made has turned quite black; and against every one of these 
black piles all sorts of filth and garbage seem to accumulate spon- 
taneously. Beneath some of the arches the sellers of maccaroni 
and polenta establish their stalls, which are by no means inviting 1 ." 
Lastly, let us cast a glance upon Naples and Venice : 



1. Lady Morgan, vol, iv, pp. 234, 235. 236. 



151 



f * Groups seated at the corners of streets (Naples), at the thresh- 
olds of the poorer sort of houses, on the shores of the Scoglio or the 
Mare-chiano, or the Mola or the Largo,talking, laughing, menacing* 
or singing, are all domestically (though not often sentimentally) em* 
ployed; wants are supplied or satisfied; trades carried on; Tasso 
read aloud; and heads cleaned, or heads shaven, all equally pro 
bono publico. A pulchinello and a £ - padre predicatore, 3 inclose 
contact, call on the sympathies of the dissipated and the devout at 
the same moment, and share between them the ever-laughing, 
moving, praying multitude, who seek sensations in proportion as 
they are denied ideas ; and who, consigned unmolested to the in^ 
tluence of their vehement passion by the absence or feeble admi- 
nistration of the laws, are as destitute of moral principles as they 
are removed from the causes out of which moral principles arise, 
property and education. Their dishonesty, which rarely rises to 
acts of violence, except during political commotion, and which is 
generally accompanied by ingenuity and urged by poverty, is the 
natural vice of a people left without one conscientious principle, by 
that government whose laws have always been the slaves of power 
and privilege, and whose religion has a ready absolution, with its 
stated price, for every sin 13 

(i They are devoted to a religion which insures them their feste 
populari, they are attached to a government which has licensed their 
violence and indolence, and not only sanctioned, but allied itself 
with their predatory bands. The government which most favours 
disorder, moral and political, will best suit the professional bandit 
of the Abruzzi, or the brutal lazzarone of Naples 2 . '* 

(i What is to be said of a government which reduces the great 
majority of the people to a slavish insensibility, to national degra-? 
dation, to a perfect indifference to national honour, a government 
which renders the subject too ignorant to comprehend the causes of 
his sufferings, and too listless to seek their removal? Yet to restore 
such a government was the avowed object of the late crusade ! 3 33 

" The Feste Popolari, or religious festivals, are so numerous, 
that scarcely a day passes without some ceremony, which serves as 
an excuse to idleness and pleasure, and which is frequently sanc- 
tioned by the government taking some part in it *, " 

" Ceremonies, appropriated to all the successive holidays, follow 
to the utter neglect of business and industry. And the most 
curious part of all this is, that these rites are celebrated with forms 



1. Lady Morgan, vol. IV, pp. 238, 239, 240. — 2. Idem, pp. 242, 243. — 3. Idem, p. 245, 
k, Idem, p. 250. 



152 

so purely those of the ancient idolatries of the Greeks, and the 
groups are so strictly the same, in costume and countenance, as 
those preserved in ancient sculpture, that even the ivy wreaths of 
Bacchus are not forgotten. The sylvan pipe and dance, with move- 
ments all grace, and gestures all pantomime, recall at once the 
groups of Greek Bacchanti, celebrating rites that have no affinity 
whatever to the sacred epochs of that religion of e long suffering 
and sacrifice' whose events they are intended to commemorate. 
Certain, however, it is, that if other sects have taken surer roads 
to Heaven, none ever chose pleasanter than those who profess the 
faith of the Neapolitan Church. 

" The religion of the lower classes in Naples is scarcely Catho- 
licism 1 . " 

({ The gross minds and ardent imaginations of the neglected and 
vivacious people know nothing of the abstract dogmas of religion; 
they require and possess a tangible creed, a something to see and 
touch, to complain of, and to adore. The wild Calabrian treats his 
tutelar Saint according to its merits; he is prodigal of praises to 
his honour and glory, or he flings him down the mountain, or 
knocks him off his shrine, as he finds him propitious or otherwise. 
We were assured that Saint Golagara (the patron of Calabria), had 
seldom his due complement of limbs and features; but when good 
harvest brought him into favour, his pardon was asked, his nose 
glued on, his face fresh painted, and his sanctity replaced in all 
its honours. The religion of England was not much more spiri- 
tual three centuries back; the moment religion takes palpable 
orms, there is no knowing where folly and fanaticism will stop 2 /' 

As it is not possible to depict all classes of Neapolitan society, we 
shall content ourselves with sketching the two extremes, the mi- 
series of the lazzaroni, and the festivals of the court : " Naples 
contained, previous to the Revolution, ten thousand monks and 
nuns, and forty thousand lazzaroni, or persons whose sole ranks in 
the state was their houseless, hopeless, irretrievable poverty. This 
fact illustrates the whole history of Naples for the last three cen- 
turies (for the lazzaroni do not seem to have had an existence as a 
body previous to the subjection of Italy by Charles the Fifth). 
Commoners of nature, in the bosom of society,^yet denied by their 
miseries all its advantages, they soon coalesced through the com- 
mon interests of their forlorn state, and became alike formidable 
by their numbers and their desperation. By limiting their wants 



1. Lady Morgan, pp. 251, 252. — 2. Idem, vol. m, pp. 177, 178, 179. 



to their means of supplying them, they became cynics without 
knowing it, and their daily habits of ease, indolence, and frugality 
illustrated the philosophy of Diogenes, without the ostentatious 
display of his tub. They who had nothing to give could not be 
taxed; they who were beyond opinion suffered nothing from its 
penalty. The two ( grani' that purchased their daily ration of 
maccaroni, the two more that went for ice-water and a puppet- 
show, were surely and easily earned ; and a little surplus of inge- 
nuity and industry procured the few yards of canvass which made 
up their whole wardrobe (a shirt and trowsers), allowing even 
something for the superfluity of their red worsted sash and cap. 
These wants supplied, nothing remained but the delicious far 
nienie, the lounge in the sun or the shade, the laugh raised indis- 
criminately at friend and foe, a prayer offered at a shrine, or 
curses given to the scrivano, who mulcts some crime which poverty 
cannot redeem by a bribe. The miserable offspring of the lazza- 
roni are the victims of this idleness and these vices ; for their 
wretched mothers, in their sheds or dens, soured by privations and 
distress, avenge on their children their own hard fate in all the 
peevishness of perpetual irritation. 

" The paternal government of the Bourbons made no effort to 
redeem this large and fearful class, which festered like a canker 
in the bosom of the State. It originated no sources of industry ; it 
checked manufacture by exclusion ; while it smiled upon the laz- 
zaroni, and spoke their dialect *. " 

We are upon the lowest step of the social ladder, let us mount to 
the top. There is enjoyment; here is misery. In order to keep 
more to our subject, let us choose a religious festival : 

" The scene of Elijah in the king's court is extremely curious. 
Acabe accuses him of heresy and sedition; in a word, of being a 
Radical reformer, disturbing the ancient laws and religion of the 
state, which, confirmed by ages, had covered the land with un- 
ceasing prosperity. To all this Elijah replies, that his mission is 
from heaven, that he is sent to overturn the reigning religion, and 
that he will work miracles to prove the truth of his assertions, 
which shall leave no doubts on the mind of the king. Upon this 
the high priest of the idolatrous Acabe is called in to back his 
master, at whose sight Elijah cannot contain his ire, and a dia- 
logue ensues which called forth the rapturous plaudits of the au- 
dience. Elijah, in a threatening attitude, calls his antagonist e un 



1. Lady Morgan, vol. t, pp. 253, 254, 255, 256, 257. 



454 

scellerato impio ; ' the high priest terms him c m scellerato ingau* 
natore ; ' and nothing remains for them but to proceed to blows, 
when the king, to save the church a scandal, with difficulty parts 
them , and it is agreed that both are to meet together in a certain 
cavern, and decide their superiority by miracles. This scene dis- 
covers the impositions of the false prophet, who is 6 tut to confuso/ 
when his materials for miracle-making are found in the cave, con- 
sisting of sticks, matches, pitch, etc., etc.; while a longprayer of 
the true prophet's not only brings down fire from heaven, which 
consumes the king, queen, and heir-apparent, but at the same time 
brings down a fine full-grown angel , vibrating in the air between 
four pulleys, while the prophet settles himself in an arm-chair for 
the purposes of translation : first, however, as he was about to 
ascend, he stepped forward, and gave out the play for the following 
evening; then, re-seating himself, he threw down an old cloak on 
his successor's head, who was in look and garb the very image of a 
Jew clothesman in the streets of London. 

" We observed upon this occasion that the theatre was filled 
with women and their children ; and that many of the boxes in- 
cluded the whole family of the lower cittadini class, even to the 
livery-boy and the baby ; for it seems a sort of duty to attend these 
sacred dramas in Lent; and all that appears so singular and eyen 
profane in these exhibitions to the foreign spectator, is by them 
attended to with reverence and interest., When the false prophet 
was praying to his false gods, and Elijah kept crying in a taunting 
tone, £ Piu forte! non fascoltano! i ('Cry louder ! they don't hear 
you!') the audience clapped their hands, and exclaimed, e Bravo 
Elijah! bravo! « " 

Let us now come to Venice, the fourth and last town which we 
have promised to survey : (£ But if the foreign traveller once de- 
parted from the Lagunes and the revels of Saint Mark's with the 
same illusions as he first arrived, that moment is now over; and 
such images of desolation and ruin are encountered, in every detail 
of the moral and exterior aspect of the city, as dissipates all vision- 
ary anticipations, and sadden down the spirit to that pitch which 
best harmonises with the misery of this once superb mistress of the 
waves 2 ." 

<£ But this busy spot, once crowded with sixteen thousand work- 
men, and the occasional resort of thirty-six thousand seamen , its 
vast sail-room, formerly filled with hundreds of females, whose 

it Lady Morgan, v©L iv, pp, 293 to 295, — 2. Malte-Brun, vol. vn, p. 422, 



155 



industry contributed to the Venetian conquests, all now are still, 
lonely, abandoned \ and nothing recalls the great Arsenal of the 
Republic of Venice, and the naval armament launched from her 
spacious docks 1 . n 

" Five thousand workmen were kept constantly employed in the 
Arsenal of Venice ; while a number considerably under eight hun- 
dred are now more than aquedate to its works; scattered over its 
immensity, they leave it a desert. The state of society, of morals, 
and manners, in Venice, from the downfall of its greatness, by the 
failure of its commerce, and the increasing despotim of its govern- 
ment, has been but too frequently and faithfully pourtrayed in the 
works of successive travellers and historians, from the quaint 
Amelot to the impartial Daru ; and the sum of its corruption has 
been philosophically illustrated by the latter with an observation 
that speaks volumes % . " 

H Convents and casinos, political tyranny and religious bigotry, 
are dire foes to the virtues which should belong to aspects so 
bewitching 3 . '* 

" But, without pausing to weigh those fatal but inevitable circum- 
stances which ever accompany an exhausted nation and a worn- 
out government, and are at once the causes and consequences of 
nationale decrepitude, it is sufficient to remark that pusillanimity, 
corruption, and the absence of a national spirit, are at least as 
much an inheritance as a consequence of personal vices ; and that 
there is no position more wretched and more worthy of compas- 
sion than the having been born under political combination unfa- 
vourable to the development of independence and public virtue 4 ." 

" The Austrian government of Venice, therefore, is not only a 
pure and unmixed despotism, but a studied and designed aggre- 
gation of every abuse that can tend to desolate and oppress, to 
break the spirit of the species, to damp industry, and to quench 
hope. The criminal processes are conducted in the strictest se- 
crecy : the accused is allowed no defender ; he is left in ignorance 
of his accuser ; he may be detained in prison six months without 
trial ; and, when acquitted, is turned loose on society, with a con- 
sciousness of the existence of a secret enemy, whose future machi- 
nations he can neither foresee nor parry 5 . The refusal of an ad- 
vocate to the accused was by no means an oversight. The subject 
was a matter of formal discussion ; and the aulic council of Vienna 
knowingly and wilfully refused as a favour what the common 

1. Lady Morgan, vol. iv, p. 371. — 2, Idem, n, 410, — 3. Idem, p. 411. — 4, Idem, p. 412, 
— 5, Idem, p. 416. 



156 

sense and common honesty of mankind instinctively acknowledge 
as a right l . The consequence of this cruel and tyrannical miscon- 
duct is, that specie has almost entirely disappeared; abase and 
valueless coin is nearly all that circulates; and it existed in such 
small quantities when we visited Venice, that to change a five- 
franc piece demanded a sacrifice of three sous. The agio also on 
gold was considerably higher that in any other town in Italy. The 
Venetians, thus plundered of their last sequin, are rendered inca- 
pable of conducting the great public works which are absolutely 
necessary for the preservation of their city. The lagunes are gra- 
dually filling up, and the houses falling into the canals, from the 
impossibility of renewing the piles on which they stand. The 
population, which was one hundred and forty thousand, is 
reduced to a hundred thousand. The trade of Venice thus 
crippled, its resources undermined, and its wealth wantonly 
exhausted, it is natural to suppose that the bitterest feeling per- 
vades the people with respect to their lawless oppressors; and 
that mutual jealousy and warranted suspicion multiplies spies, 
and contributes, with the increasing poverty of the nobility, to 
break up society and dissolve the links of intercourse and commu- 
nication' 2 . " 

e£ The story of Venice has obtained the popularity of a legend. 
It begins splendidly ! — A few free spirits, looking round in vain 
for some asylum against despotism, find not one spot on earth 
to shelter them. They congregate on the ocean, and are left the un- 
disturbed masters of mud-banks and sea-weed. They are free and 
poor; they suffer much, and enjoy nothing, but liberty! They 
arrive at wealth and national importance under the influence of an 
energising necessity ! Then come power and foreign dominion ; 
and the gangrene of national ruin already poisons the constitutions 
of the. state, and the institutes of society, circulating its infection 
under the various guises of ambition, luxury, and ostentation, cor- 
ruption in morals, licentiousness in manners! Power, centered in 
the few, weighed on the many ; a national senate became a state in- 
quisition, suspicion was the leading principle, and spies the effi- 
cient agents of government 3 . " 

From studying thus separately the Italian towns, let us now 
survey them as a whole. For this purpose we shall follow a cele- 
brated traveller : "One sees everywhere, in Italy/' says the 
abbe de Lamennais, " in these degenerate days, some grievous 



i. Lady Morgan, vol. IV, p. 418, — 2. Idem, p. 419, — 3. Idem, pp. 4-20. 421. 



spectacle, some mark of bondage. The universal misery reveal- 
ing itself under so many hideous forms contrasts in most places 
with the native richness of the soil. Idleness, apathy, languor, 
ignorance, these are the striking characteristics. Even religion, 
whose past magnificence fills one with astonishment, seems to 
have done nothing during ten centuries hut build itself a vast 
sepulchre. A dozen or fifteen Franciscans wander in the solitude 
of the convent of Assise, formerly occupied by 6,000 monks 1 ." 

" There seems to arise from Rome some indescribable vapour of 
the tomb which lulls to rest and sleep, soothing the soul to dreams 
of eternal slumber. We may live there with the hope of death, 
but never with that of life ; for there exists not in the place a sha- 
dow of vitality ; no movement, save that secret agitation caused by 
the hidden multitude of small interests which crawl and creep in 
darkness like the worms amid the gloom of the sepulchre. Power 
and people, all appear like shadows of the past. The Queen of 
Cities, throned in the midst of a wilderness, has become the City of 
Death, who reigns triumphant in all its majesty. Repose, idleness, 
slumber, interrupted from time to time by spectacles which arouse 
the senses, such is the happiness offered to men. No public life; 
nothing, therefore, to provoke activity, nothing social. Over the 
gate of the palace inhabited by the governor (an office always filled 
by a prelate), is fixed the famous monogram S. P. Q. R., of which 
the most exact translation is certainly in this case the French one : 
si peu que Hen 2 . 99 

" I need only paint (says the same writer), with local colouring, 
the effects for ever of illimited despotism; the oppression of spirits 
thrown back by a brutal power which intimidates all manifestation 
of thought in its smallest degree ; the total absence of all security 
for persons or property; violence and corruption; the despotism of 
the government always in suspicion and fear ; in the aspect of the 
people, condemned to vegetate in perpetual dread of the bayonet 
of the soldier and the eye of the spy; a prodigious amount of misery 
alike physical, moral, and intellectual ; and a debasement so pro- 
found that the nation has almost ceased to be aware of its existence. 
Italy ! Italy ! The dead heroes of past ages have arisen from their 
graves; from the slopes of the Apennines the lonely shepherd has 
beheld them, with sad brow, and their long hair covered with the 
dust of the sepulchre, gazing around upon this land once so great 
and glorious; and, as if they could not recognise it for their own, 



1. Lady Morgan, vol. iv, pp. 422, 423. — 2. Lamennais, p. 10 to 12, 



they shake their heads with a bitter smile , and return to their 
tombs K " 

" With the loss of liberty and civic virtue, Tuscany seems to have 
lost the genius of science and the genius of art. Some narcotic drug 
has been mixed with the people's drink, and it has fallena sleep 
amid the dreams of its ancient glory. In the midst of past great- 
ness the traveller beholds the fellah sleeping on the threshold of 
the great temples of Thebes and Heliopolis, or the necropolis of the 
Pharaohs*." 

cc At every step (in Ferrare) we behold the sad symptoms of incur- 
able decay. We have beheld in a convent, now transformed into 
a barrack, a Croat nailing the manger of his horse against the wall 
of a refectory, covered with fresco paintings of remarkable beauty. 
The stupid barbarian, sent from a far country to maintain what 
princes have chosen to call their rights, was whistling carelessly, 
not even aware of the destruction of which he was the instrument. 
Thus, in a confined space, the traveller beholds at one glance every 
extremity of human misery, misery of greatness, misery of genius, 
misery of the people languishing and dying beneath a double op- 
pression. Those who wander among these people can have but one 
thought, that of the vast cemetery he has before his eyes. Books, 
papers, even private letters, are all examined at the douane with 
the most minute care and suspicion; not one of those base and ir- 
ritating perquisitions invented by political terror, united to fiscal 
rapacity, is spared to the traveller 3 . " 

(i I know nothing more sad, and at the same time more instruc- 
tive, than the spectacle afforded by Venice, fallen as it is under 
foreign rule. The population, reduced to half its numbers, is com- 
pelled to toil painfully to procure a subsistence, which, poor as it 
is, becomes the object of dispute with the hard taskmaster. That 
commerce, once the source of its immense riches, has passed to the 
other side of the Adriatic; a system of police, which fills the mind 
with terror, can, upon simple suspicion, condemn the citizen to the 
dungeons multiplied by despotic power, and spreads throughout 
every relations of life distrust and suspicion, iujustice in the laws, 
and partiality in the tribunals. A few palaces have been confiscat- 
ed on those slight pretexts which are never wanting with the strong 
against the weak ; almost all of them are falling rapidly to decay *. " 

i( A deep and heavy sadness seizes on the soul when the gaze is 
directed towards that Rome, once so full of grandeur, and now so 



L Lamennais, p. 103. —2. idem, p. 112, —3. IdeWi^ pp. H4, 115. — 4. idem, p. 11?. 



lo9 

fallen, so feeble. Miserable ruin of ages in (lie midst of other ruin ! 
silent shadow of the past, mourning by the tomb ! What has become 
of its ancient power ? Those who bowed the head in obedience to 
her commands now give out their dictates with a mocking jeer. 
She believes in them, and they have no faith in her. What strikes 
one at first, in the actual state of Rome, is the absolute want of all 
action, and the humiliating dependence to which she is reduced, 
on the will of the temporal sovereigns. The immense interests of 
humanity have stirred the world through whole generations of 
mankind ; they occupy the universal mind ; what has she done 
towards the solving of the one great question? Nothing. A revo- 
lution is taking place in the bosom of Christianity ; awakened peoples 
are bursting their antique chains, their ancient laws ; ihev cry alond 
for a new order of things. What has she done? Nothing 1 . " 

" What is most to be desired in all classes is the knowledge of 
the present state of society in Europe, and, out of Europe, of the 
real causes of events, and of the intimate tendency of all things. 
In this respect, Rome is behind, and frightfully behind, every na- 
tion over whom her influence, for the good of humanity, would be 
beneficial. She exists in the past alone, in a past which will return 
no more, and hence the isolation in which she stands V 

" Every source of education necessary for the acquirement, in 
the century in which we live, of moral ascendancy being closed 
against the priests of Italy, whose studies are forcibly confined to 
scholastic dryness, it becomes evident that they must be deprived 
of every influence over certain classes of society, and those the most 
important. Unfortunately, another evil greater still accrues from 
this defect. I do not speak of the loose morality or of the habits of 
pleasure adopted by the greater portion of the clergy 3 . n 

But let us leave these pestilential cities, and let us see whether we 
can breathe a less corrupt atmosphere far from the Roman towns. 
Upon this subject Charles Didier says : " Instead of the green plains 
which charmed the eyes of Pliny (in the environs of Civita Vecchia), 
were he to visit them now he would find nought but an unhealthy 
soil without trees, without cultivation, and almost without vegetable 
production. Many leagues of this deserted solitude greet the eye. 
The only habitations of these sad shores are the watch-towers, rais- 
ed at certain intervals along the coast ; the soldiers stationed are 
scarcely ever free from fever, which undermines their health and 
strength; the flabbiness of their muscles, their yellow skins, their 

i. Lameimais, pp. 210, 212. — 2. Idem, pp. 215, 216. — 3. Lamennais, Affaires de Rome, 
p. 223. 



1(50 



languid movements, tell of the venom in their veins ; those whom 
the fever spares are generally dying of starvation, for these sombre 
deserts are struck by every plague at once. Pursued by hunger, 
1 entered one of these watch towers; but, instead of the rustic fru- 
gality I had anticipated, I found nought but sour wine, and bread 
so hard that it had to be chopped with a hatchet. Even this miser- 
able state of destitution was one of luxury ; Santa-Maniella being 
celebrated for its good cheer ! If, however, the provisions might be 
regarded as scant, the welcome was much more so. The peasant 
woman scarcely deigned to cast her eyes upon me; she condescend- 
ed, however, to point to a broken three-legged stool, and to spread 
out before me, on a pine-wood table, which had never been scoured, 
the splendid repast I have just described. The manner of this hos- 
pitality was that of throwing to an importunate beggar the crust no 
longer required by the household. " But hush! " Nowhere on 
earth is the knife so ready to avenge offended pride as in the cam- 
pagna of Rome 1 . " 

" Aqueducts dried up and destroyed, ancient public ways now 
untrodden by human foot, temples without gods, cities without 
men, tombs without corpses, depopulated plains, silent forests, fetid 
marshes, ports choked up, shores deserted, such is thy glory, 
Rome ! The sun shines brightly upon it from the heavens ; and 
drags to light thy shame and desolation. Of what use, oh fallen 
Queen! have been all thy endeavours to hide thy decay, when 
the sun, pitiless spectator of human vicissitude, comes each day with 
dazzling pomp to insult thy misery, as if asking thee what thou 
hast done with all thy glory and thy splendour ? 2 " 

" I have traversed several villages of the Abruzzi; no language 
can describe their utter destitution; they might be taken for spots 
where the plague had passed. If the plague visits them not, famine 
is their constant guest. A few women aud helpless old men, with 
infants in the cradle, are the only inhabitants of the cottages. Not 
a single male visage to give them hope and animation; not a single 
male arm to defend them from danger. Ploughs unused and thrown 
aside may be seen now and then lying across the streets, where roll 
pele-mele the children and the pigs. 

" The Italian princes behold these calamities, and their hoggish 
indolence prevents them from applying any remedy to the evil. 
The Church is neither more intelligent nor more humane; the 
only charity she bestows upon the reapers, who come to gather in 

i. Didiev, pp. 23 to 30. — % Idem, pp. 137 to 139. 



1(31 



her harvests, is to bury them when they die. It is a terrible thing 
to declare that death is not only occasioned by malaria in these 
pestiferous solitudes, but that starvation also does its work, and not 
only in the campagnas, but even in the capital of the Christian 
world. I saw myself a man fainting with want and inanition 
beneath the portico of the magnificent Palazzo Marsini. Another 
one expired on the marble steps of Saint Peter. The priest was 
celebrating mass, the hundred and twelve silver lamps were burn- 
ing round the tomb of the Apostle, and a Christian was dying of 
hunger at the foot of the altar, all dazzling with gold and precious 
stones. This is the manner in which at Rome is practised the 
religion of the crucified Saviour ! 1 " 

" As far as the sight can reach (between Rome and Ostia) not a 
single habitation or inhabitant can be descried. But, stay; I am 
in error. I perceive on the edge of the wood a hut of reeds, and 
two children naked, livid, and swollen by fever, rolling in the 
dust like savages from Timbuctoo. The wooden crosses, planted 
by the way-side, indicate the spots where murder has been com- 
mitted ; human life has disappeared from this exhausted plain, and 
if two men meet therein be sure that one of them has come out to 
murder the other. The background of this fetid and desolate 
landscape is occupied by an old crenelated castle, falling to decay, 
round which are heaped pele-mele a few smoky hovels, whose 
cracked walls, admitting neither light or air, deserted for the most 
part, are abandoned to reptiles. Some filthy space, designated as 
a square, and which offers nothing but a collection of dirt and 
rubbish, forms the approach of a miserable little church, dedicated 
to the mother of Saint Augustine; all this is encircled and shut in 
by a wall, entered by a gate which once was the gate of a city, and 
which was called Ostia ! 

" The inhabitants are worthy of their habitations. Ostia is a 
species of Botany-Bay, where out of three men two are generally 
galley slaves, and the third worthy of becoming so. What ken- 
nels, good God! What language must be used to paint these 
hideous receptacles, infectious, horrible, where the light of the sun 
has never penetrated, but where, by way of compensation, the 
smoke of the hearth remains for ever ! The four wails cannot 
be called naked, for they are veiled by a thick coating of dirt and 
soot; the furniture is composed of a wooden plank upon three feet, 
which serves as table by day, and as bed by night. The poverty 



1. Didicr, pp. 158, 161. 
T. II. 



11 



162 

of onr poorest peasants may be regarded as riches when compared to 
the Roman wealth \" 

Charles Didier is not the only author who paints the campagna 
of Rome in these sombre colours. 

Such is the social state of Italy. Where has this people learnt 
the conduct of its moral condition? In its education. Let us 
therefore study it : 

Education. — The free development of thought experiences 
every possible obstacle on the part of power. Nothing is left 
undone to prevent it. If it kills material prosperity, it is by indi- 
rect means ; but thought, science, become dreaded for themselves; 
for sooner or later they generate liberty, Thence, the monstrous 
system of prohibition and of censure to aid in the perpetuation of 
ignorance amongst the masses, and even amongst the higher 
classes. The state of morals is in general deplorable in Italy, 
although less so than in Spain. The absence of all intellectual 
life, idleness, ennui, drive men to seek, in sensual pleasures, 
a brutal diversion from this sentiment of existence without aim 
upon the earth V 

M, de Sismondi will enable us to witness, as it were, a course of 
Italian education : " A young Italian/' says he, " never either 
thinks or feels the want of thought. The profound idleness in which 
his days are passed would be the greatest misery to a northern tem- 
perament. This idleness becomes from habit not only a necessity, 
but almost a pleasure. The hours of childhood have been employed 
with a view to guard against the use of his intellectual faculties. 
The monks, who have had the direction of all his occupations, 
have retrenched all fervour from his prayers, all invention from 
his amusements, all attention from his studies, all frankness from 
his attach ui en ts. The pious exercises of the Church occupy the 
greater portion of the hours of the student; but it is considered suf- 
ficient if, by the sound of his voice, his presence can be recognised. 
While a devotional exercise of short duration might have served as 
warning to his conscience, the rosary which he repeats as often 
as three times a day, without comprehension, accustoms him to 
the entire separation of thought and language ; it becomes an exer- 
cise of abstraction when it is not one of hypocrisy. 

" A certain time, however, is allowed in Italy in the schools and 
seminaries to recreation and pastime; but monastic discipline 
follows the student during the very moment which is given to his 



1. Didier, pp. 198, 200. — 2. Lamennais, pp. 119, 120. 



103 

play. Every day, at the same hour, the long procession of students 
leaves the seminary ; two priests march at its head, others are 
mingled in its ranks, others again close the train. The step of the 
promenaders is never hastened, never diminished; they never 
may pause to gather a flower, or to watch the most curious specimen 
of insect industry, or to examine the mysterious fabric of a stone; 
they may never assemble in groups to play, to discuss, to talk in 
confidence ; monastic authority is full of suspicion ; it has been 
taught to mistrust mankind, and to behold nought but corruption 
in the century. There is nothing which the pedagogue thinks 
unworthy of his fears, as much for the discipline of his school 
as for his own authority. The ties of friendship amongst his 
pupils would be a conspiracy in his eyes; he hastens, there- 
fore, to break them: confidence amongst them would lead to 
nothing but corruption, and he renders its existence impossible : 
esprit de corps amongst the boys would place a boundary to 
his power; he attacks it as a revolt; he rewards the secret spy; 
he accords all his protection to the mean spirit who sacrifices his 
comrade. 

(c Unhappy youth, thus educated ! What can have been learnt 
in the schools but the habit of mistrust of his fellow men, of flat- 
tery and lies ! What remains of all his studies but the disgust of 
everything he has acquired, and the incapacity of seeking new 
occupations? His wit has only produced inertness of thought; 
the distribution of rewards and penalties nothing more than the 
basest hypocrisy. The monks have taught him distrust of himself 
and cowardice. The vices with which we reproach the Italian 
nation belong not to itself, but to its institutions. 

" The pupils thus educated by monastic discipline are received 
on leaving these monastic schools into the legislation of the 
country, to form them for bearing the yoke, and to fashion into 
obedient subjects. They have never been taught to examine 
into the origin of any species of authority , Avhile they have 
been told that everything in the world must repose upon 
authority. Their minds have become too indolent ever to mount 
upwards to the source of what the belief is to which he is com- 
pelled to submit. Led blindfold by the priests throughout the 
whole of their education, they lay the same blindfold obedience 
at the feet of their princes. It is no longer an heroic devo- 
tion to certain families which has entered into the spirit of 
certain Italian provinces; it is mere indolent obedience, having 
no further principle of action than the fatigue of struggle, and the 



164 



constant desire of repose. To obey those in command lias become 
a proverbial maxim , represented as containing at the same time the 
whole principle of every duty, both private and political. These 
general principles of Italian education are applied in every part 
of the country i J > 

" At one period, in the time of the learned Giasone Maino, 
Pavia contained three thousand students ; but it declined in num- 
bers and reputation until'to wards the end of the eighteenth century; 
it was so fallen that even its former reputation was almost forgot- 
ten; and this splendid establishment, so noted even in the four- 
teenth century, was without a library, a museum, collections, or 
any means of affording subsistence to science or public edu- 
cation 2 . ". 

'* Formerly the females were taken from the hireling nurse 
to the cloister of a nunnery; where, to learn their rubrick, 
and work Adam and Eve in hem stitch, comprised the sum 
total of their acquirements. The sons were given up in early 
boyhood by the family chaplain to a monkish college, where 
their minds were involved in bigotry, as their persons were 
disfigured by the monastic garb. Of the younger sons , the 
major part remained to swell the ranks of the Church militant; 
the rest came forth from the cloister to hang in idle depen- 
dence upon the patronage of primogeniture, or to earn a more 
degraded subsistence as cavalier ■c-scrvenle to some wealthy dame, 
whose w^ane of charms threw her on the paid attentions of the 
noble but destitute cadet V 

" But impediments are now thrown in the march of mind, with 
which genius of whatever sex or calling is doomed for the present 
to struggle. To retrograde, not to advance, is the order of the 
day in Lombardy ; to dull and not to brighten, their policy *.V 

" At Venice/' says Malte-Brun, " the artisans of the city are 
formed into several corporations, and each of them maintains a 
school; they are sixteen or eighteen in number, the greater part 
assembled in sumptuous buildings, ornamented with pictures and 
statues. Such institutions might create a belief that the Vene- 
tian people are more enlightened than any other. Nothing of the 
kind; the sole honour that could be accorded to this people would 
be the supposition of its ignorance being less than that evinced by 
the lower classes elsevvhere. 

£C The public libraries are little frequented ; the reading-rooms 



i. Sismondi, vol. xvr. — 2. Lady Morgan, vol. If, p. 38. — 3. idem, pp. 349, 350. 



are only furnished with the worst kind of romances; and, with the 
exception of a few choice spirits favoured hy Nature, we can only 
find men of the most ordinary stamp in the city which gave birth 
to Algarottij to Gaspar Gazzi, to Golcloni, to Bembo, and to many 
other distinguished individuals. If the Venetians are illiterate, 
music has become their favourite art. An author describes thus the 
manner in which the Venetians of fortune pass their time in 
Venice : ( They rise at eleven or twelve o' clock, pay a few visits, 
or walk through the town until three o' clock; they then dine, 
sleep an hour when the weather is hot, dress themselves, and go 
to the cafe until nine, then to the Opera, which is another casino ; 
again to the cafe for another hour or two, and only retire in 
summer with the dawn of day. Nobody ever reads. The nobles 
live in obscurity and poverty in a corner of their palaces: many 
amongst them dine at the restaurateurs at 2 francs a head, and the 
more prudent at 16 sous, French money. 3 

" Notwithstanding the decay in which the commerce of Venice 
is fallen, it is still one of the most important stores of Italy 1 . " 

" At Naples, amongst the class of the people, the rising genera- 
tion can both read and write. True, this degree of education does 
not extend beyond the walls of the capital. The colleges are fre- 
quented by the children of the bourgeoisie only 2 . The princes of 
the house of Savoy seek to spread useful knowledge amongst the 
higher classes of the population ; but they appear to have wholly 
forgotten the people, who languish in ignorance and supersti- 
tion. The primary schools are few in number, and little fre- 
quented 3 ." 

" At Parma, " says M. Genin, " for a few years past, the 
government has confided the education of youth to the Jesuits ; 
they direct at Piacenzathe College of Saint Peter's. In 1846, the 
municipal body of that town, in speaking of the budget of expenses, 
expresses itself in these terms : 'The council admits without reser- 
vation the 5,200 livres allowed to the reverend Fathers entrusted 
by government with the direction of the college of Saint Peter's; 
but, in obedience with the legal necessity registering this expense, 
the council cannot help thinking that the money thus expended no 
longer answers the object for which it was voted, nor the hopes 
which had been conceived. An imperative duty towards the 
citizens compels them to declare that the state of the college is a 
source of affliction and complaint to the whole city, and that the 

1. Maltc-Bnin vol. vir, p. 277. — <2. JJim, p. 422. — 2. Jdnn, \\ 2C0. 



1GG 



experiments which have been already tried leave but little hope 
for the future. ' 

" Parents are in consternation at beholding the entire demorali- 
sation which has invaded these schools ; they are indignant at 
finding the progress of their children to have been made only in 
wickedness and turbulence l . " 

Such is Italian education; but what has formed it? The Roman 
Catholic religion. Let this, then, be our study; and the more so 
that we are now in its sanctuary : 

Religion. — " After having admitted the general dogmas of the 
Church, " says M. Sismondi, u the Italian people looked upon 
them as no longer in need of examination or study; denoting the 
great respect felt for Christian faith in avoiding the subject altoge- 
ther. The most dissolute as well as the most reserved in their 
conduct, the most philosophical as well as the most superstitious in 
their belief, never breathed a doubt against the doctrines of the 
Church, as a whole ; but, at the same time no single sentiment was 
ever excited whereby to influence any action of their lives. Reli- 
gion, separated from reason, from sensibility, from morals, and 
from conduct, had become a mere habit of the mind, imposing cer- 
tain practices, and compelling to certain ideas. People had grown 
accustomed to resistance against the Pope, to making war upon 
him, and to despising his excommunications. It was known that 
his court was corrupt, his policy most treacherous, and that the 
most odious passions were at times concealed beneath the mask of 
religion 2 . is 

(< Thus, it may be said that in Modern Italy religion, far from 
serving as support to morality, has perverted its every principle ; 
that education, so far from developing the faculties of the mind, 
has thrown them into slumber that legislation, instead of attaching 
the citizens to their country, and drawing them together by the 
ties of fraternity, has only filled them with fear and with de- 
fiance, and given them selfishness for prudence, and baseness for 
bravery V 

66 Murder is no longer a duty, but it is not yet a shame. It is an 
idea with which every one has grown familiar. The Italian re- 
gards it as the fatal consequence of an impetuous movment of 
anger, jealousy, or vengeance ; he does not feel in his heart that he 
will never be driven to plunge his knife in his neighbour's throat, 
because he has never been accustomed to look upon such an act 



\, Genin, p, 73,-2. Sismondi, vol, xvji, pp, 5, 6. — 3, Id., pp, 442 to 446. — 4, Id, p, 370, 



167 



with the inexpressible horror inspired by the thought of any odious 
crime *, Si 

** Tt is only in Italy and Spain that the vicious habit of blas- 
phemy is met with, entirely unknown amongst the Protestants, 
and not to be confounded with the gross swearing which the lower 
classes, in all countries, mingle in their discourse. In every fit of 
passion of the people of the South, the Saviour himself is attacked, 
threatened, and loaded with the most foul abuse. Traces of this 
scandalous habit are to be found in the language and the oaths of 
other nations ; but the will to insult the Divinity by this species of 
attack could only be preserved in a country where superstition, 
unceasingly at variance with incredulity, has diminished every 
object of worship, until it has descended to the level of mankind V 

i( Tn the affections of the whole Roman population, the theatre 
and the Church divide both love and admiration. For the arts, 
especially for music, the Italian races profess the most ardent wor_ 
ship, and it is to this taste for spectacle that we must attribute the 
exaltation of a devotion so far from sincere piety. 

" The subtlety of the Romish clergy has, in all times, enabled it 
to take advantage of this disposition, and it is by the double spec- 
tacle of the scenery and religious ceremonies that the priests have 
been enabled to seduce, astonish, and charm those whom they 
sought to enslave. 

At the bottom of all these acts of the piety of the people, there 
exists a sensual thought. Sift the motive of the prayer which 
seemingly mounts to Heaven, and you will find some material 
interest which draws it back again to earth , 

**■ Formerly, the holiness of the precincts of the Church was so 
far lost sight of that refreshments were served in the aisle. This 
usage is being restored, particularly in the chapels of certain 
convents 3 . " 

" As for the Church material, the Saints whom the superstitious 
crowd invoke with so much fervour are a much better speculation 
than the Divinity himself, to whom the prayers of low tendency, 
and the interested demands of the Catholic clergy, must not be 
addressed. In the legend, each one of these friends of God, as they 
are denominated by the Church, has some especial attribute, just 
the same as was the case with the vulgar herd of the Pagan gods, 
of whom the Romish Church thus continues the traditions with a 
view to the most shameful traffic, 

l, Sisworidi, vol, xvi, p, 457. — 2, Idem, p. 378, — 4, Bnffault, pp. 103, \%\. ' 



168 



" Rome places these religious parades amongst the number of 
its amusements. It is, therefore, to those who treat so lightly all 
religious things that we must attribute the discredit now thrown 
upon a worship once so highly venerated l . " 

" in the galleries of the churches, where the women most 
remarkable for their birth, their beauty, or their gallantry are 
assembled, frequent disputes arise concerning the places; sono- 
rous and lusty oaths are exchanged in the same manner as in the 
public markets of the city. The grand dignitaries of the Church, 
present at these scenes of scandal, may sometimes be heard to join 
in them by their undisguised laughter, instead of instantly repres- 
sing them by their authority. At church or theatre the same 
necessity for noisy and turbulent demonstrations. In the galle- 
ries arise discussions concerning the eloquence of the Christian 
preacher, just as in the boxes of the theatre the talents of a singer or 
a prima donna are made subject of debate. The moments which 
precede the ceremonies are given to noisy salutation, and to loud 
recognitions between the aisle and the galleries. The audacity of 
the women in these outbreaks is without bounds; they call aloud 
to the prelates they wish to attract. The multitude which fills the 
entire edifice, meanwhile, sways to and fro, chats, moves about, 
looks right and left, and betrays curiosity and indifference by 
turns. Its behaviour is free from all restraint, and far from all 
reserve. It would be easy to imagine oneself in a cafe on the 
Corso, or in the foyer of the Opera; for nothing either to be seen 
or heard can bring to mind the holiness of the place 2 . " 

" The least inconvenience of the ridiculous superstitions to 
which are united, as we have just seen, the chief of the Church and 
the higher clergy, and which keep up in the minds of the people 
both ignorance and credulity, is to replace in the minds of the po- 
pulation forethought and reflection by the indifference of fatalism, 
and which seems to rely upon supernatural protection for those 
prudent cares which ought never to be laid aside. Hence that indo- 
lence peculiar to the Roman people, and the persuasion that all 
the Saints of Paradise are exclusively occupied in watching over 
the minutest details of existence \ " 

" I have never beheld amongst the Italians of Rome the display 
of energy save amid the fire of their superstitious demonstrations 
of devotion. Incapable of rousing their feelings in a noble cause, 
they have always at command a multitude of emotions for sensual 



I. BrifTanlt, p. 1G7. — 2. idem, pp. 1G8. 169. — 3. idem, p. 181. 



169 



expression. In order to judge these soft and vicious natures, you 
should follow them in places open to the crowd ; there you may 
see all that is hase in the tastes of this people, whose triviality 
stifles so often the artistic organisation of their Italian nature V 

" Sometimes, amid the cloisters, the most lively qualities of 
spirit and intelligence grow blunted and withered beneath the 
cowl. Entirely given up to small artifice, to deadened hypocrisy, 
to all the debasing subterfuge of monastic rivalship, the soul 
becomes withered and blighted, and beneath this morbid influence 
the heart dies, and its warm impulses cease. A blind worship, and 
a complete servility to the interests of an association detached from 
the general community, bind and compress the ideas and senti- 
ments in a circle of constraint, and nothing more is brought thence 
into the world than the enfeebled and impotent organisation V? 

" In Rome, and in many other places, it is common to pray to 
Mary to favour all the bad desires engendered by the worst of pas- 
sions. Does not the brigand of Spain and Italy place beneath the 
invocation of the Virgin his deeds of murder and rapine ? Does 
not the fonl courtezan of Rome believe her duty done when she 
has veiled the image of the Madonna which decks her boudoir? 
Does not the rosary hang at the assassin's girdle side by side with 
the dagger and stiletto ? Does not the bandit's peaked hat display 
a goodly show of blessed images? Does not the scapulary cover 
the breast where crime is engendered ? No one would dare to ask 
of a man what the Roman dares to beg of the Holy Mother of God. 
What has the Church done to stay these shameless deviations? 
Has she not, on the contrary, by her complacency, authorised these 
superstitious beliefs, which submit to her dominion the multitude 
thus weakened and degraded ? Gould we not find among certain 
minute practices the germ of these superstitions ? And then, in 
transporting our examination further into the power and the pro- 
fits brought to the clergy by these exercises, which have changed 
both the cause and the aim of religion, are we not led to believe 
that a vile interest is the mainspring of this favour? 3 

" The Roman population has remained faithful to its ancient 
tastes; the ardour for the games of the Circus are still continued in 
its affection for the magnificence of fetes, spectacles of all kinds, 
and for religious solemnities. In the intoxication of pleasure, 
Rome forgets the rest, and is no longer aware of her sufferings and 
humiliation. These signs indicate debasement and decay \ " 



1. Briffault, p. 190. — 2. Idem, p. 240. — 3. Idem, p. 174 to 170. — 4. Idem, p. 49. 



170 



u Base, cowardly, insolent, blaspheming, atheistical, supersti- 
tious, raising his heaver and crossing himself before every Madonna, 
while proffering the most blasphemous oaths against his cattle, 
against the passenger, against even Heaven itself, such is the 
Italian 1 ." 

" Italy, incrusted with Popery, is a country where superstition 
reigns in all its plenitude, where life is in the stagnation of death, 
where no new superstition could be established unless engrafted on 
the old, where they explained the fall of Cagliostro at Rome by 
these words : 1 He had put no cross upon his pills 2 / w 

We have already remarked that in Catholicism the clergy holds 
an extensive place, and almost constitutes religion itself. By 
studying the first, we become acquainted with the second. It 
would be too long a task to go through the various degrees of the 
Roman hierarchy \ but we will examine the two extremes : the 
Sovereign Pontiff, absolute monarch; and the Priest, simple do- 
mestic chaplain : 

" Owning no ancestry, the Roman Pontiff is alike without 
posterity ; the present only is his own ; but for him the past has no 
existence, the future can never be. Hence arise that carelessness 
of ail things, and that eagerness for temporary joys. Hence that 
wasting of the fortunes of the State, diminished with each reign ; 
hence the use of pontifical families enriched by the public 
treasure; hence, in short, that example of general ruin which each 
Pope, needy and prodigal, contributes to hasten. There exists in 
the history of Papacy a fatal sign. The good resolves of the Pontiffs, 
their efforts for the public welfare, become invariably arrested or 
distorted by the shortness of their day of power, and the rapidity 
of their passage to the throne. Doubt and uncertainty allow them 
not to take a prompt and energetic resolution ; they scarcely dare to 
commence a work which, after them, will meet with nought but 
hands ready for its destruction. In the midst of these continued 
changes the projects which might serve to preserve a century to 
the gratitude of the world are suffered to perish. Those], on the 
contrary, who behold in the Papal throne an opportunity of satis- 
fying their passions, hasten to enjoy the pleasures which opulence 
presents 3 . At Rome, since the attention of Papal authority has 
all been directed towards things temporal, the spiritual affairs of 
the Holy See have only become a secondary consideration, and 
religion, whose dogma should moderate and repress these attacks of 

%, Gawbry, vol, u, p.1248, — 2, Idem, p. 336, - 3, Biiffault, p, 239, 



171 



worldly vanity, is only put in requisition to keep up the principles 
the most fatal to (he true spirit of Christianity. It would seem 
almost folly in our day to seek in Rome for the truth of evangelical 
moral, the sincerity of Christian precept, and the respect of Divine 
doctrine; all these are things of which no heed is taken V 

Now, from this summit of clerical power, let us descend to its 
last degree : " In many houses of Rome, amongst the most noble, 
but above all in those of the rich bourgeoisie, an individual is met 
with called the priest. This individual is generally the factotum 
of the house : he overlooks its domestic economy, sees to the ser- 
vice, is the confidant of the wife, the friend of the husband, and 
the tutor of the children. He meddles likewise with the external 
interests of the family, and with the care of the fortune. Nothing 
is done without consulting him, and his opinion, kept in the 
background, reigns and governs without being manifest. His po- 
sition is not absolutely a servile one; neither is it reverenced or 
honoured. He is placed between the master and the servant, by 
whom he is invariably detested. It is not a rare occurrence to 
find that the priest is the confidant of the wife's amours, the 
husband's gallantries, the longings of the maiden, the dissipation 
of the youth, and the larcenies of the domestics. Then is his 
power supreme; he holds all the threads by which he can move the 
puppets it becomes his interest to enslave 2 . " 

Between the priest, so called, and the laic, we find the religious 
orders. As they also belong to the clergy, we ought to mention 
them : (< The religious orders, h says M. Briflault, i{ are only re- 
cruited from the lowest class of society; the one whose total want of 
education and the rudeness of its habits render the least disposed 
towards instruction or progress. The individuals of this order, 
who devote themselves to the cloister, have seldom any other motive 
then the most narrow-minded selfishness. They are forced to 
replace by hypocrisy and lies the learning and suavity which are 
found wanting. Their superiors know well enough how to excite 
their zeal, and to exalt it to a fanatical devotion, from which they 
can demand everything. The monk is the instrument which a 
superior will, isolated like his own from every duty towards the 
State, can command at pleasure. 

(i It is from the lowest ranks of this monkish militia that are 
chosen those furious apostles whose maniacal preachings carry 
trouble to the bosoms of the lowly, and spread amongst the villages 

l, Briffanlt, p. 435,-2, Idem, p. 443, 



172 



that stupid incredulity and perverse intolerance by which they 
live ; from those same lower regions of the cloister do those clouds 
of locusts arise, who absorb and devour the produce of labour. 

u These monks are the most audacious propagators and the most 
intrepid defenders of all those superstitions which hold the people 
in ignorance and error, and render it an easy task to plunder them 
by the most gross manoeuvres. Their contact with the inferior 
classes, from which they emanate, is one of every hour, and 
always fatal. The monks, in order to keep up in the minds of the 
people the beliefs necessary to favour their rapines, have penetrat- 
ed into the habits of indigence, from which they know to extort the 
very last bajocco. They carry terror and desolation to hearts they 
ought to comfort and console. They speculate upon the religious 
hopes and fears which their impostures have sown. In a higher 
grade of society other monks are found, whose manners are more 
cultivated. These know how to insinuate themselves into the 
bosom of families, to seize the gifts of the living, and the inheri- 
tance of the dead. They make a study of the confidences of the 
family to exercise a secret tyranny, and levy a secret tribute. 

" Perfidious emissaries, they slide into the houses where a rich 
heir might benefit the cloister, and satisfy their cupidity. They 
surprise the confidence of parents, and by the artifices with which 
they surround them direct their will towards a mystic aim, but 
always tending towards the aggrandisement of monkish fortune. 
Sometimes it is by discord that their aim is attained. Masters in 
the arts of fomenting internal dissension, they seek to irritate the 
children against their parents, and the parents against the children. 
They manage to place spies in opulent houses by corrupting the ser- 
vants, who sell them the secrets of their masters, and favour by 
this means their avaricious plans 1 . " 

Having spoken of the government, of the education of the 
people, of the religion, and of the clergy, we should now be pre- 
paring to speak of the industry and commerce of the country; but, 
alas ! we are reduced to note these down as entirely null and void. 

Commerce. — " No kind of industry, " says Sismondi, " can be 
pursued without a little capital; some small outlay is required even 
for the slightest apprenticeship ; a literary education itself is the re- 
sult of a long course of expensive study. Agriculture requires land, 
commerce exacts capital, and the manufacturer cannot pursue his 
calling without tools and raw material. The greater proportion of 

1. Briffault, p. 288 to 290. 



173 



younger sous, excluded in Italy from every one of these pursuits 
on account of their poverty, live in constant dependence and 
constant idleness. The four-fifths of the nation are condemned to 
no interest in life, no hope in the future, and to contribute by no 
exertion to the prosperity of their fellow countrymen *. " 

" While nothing is done to promote commerce within the Mila- 
nese, everything is done to cripple it without. Enormous duties 
upon foreign manufactures have stimulated ingenuity to evade 
bad laws, which serve only to multiply sources of licentiousness and 
corruption 2 . " 

In a country where neither commerce nor industry are to be 
found, where agriculture is neglected, and science unknown, the 
people must necessarily be supposed to live inactive, and this 
inactivity leads to mendicity, mendicity to theft, and theft to 
crime. " The universal taste for the far nientc," says Malte-Brun, 
" which distinguishes the Italian is not wholly to be attributed to 
the influence of climate. It is to a moral rather than a physical 
cause that we must have recourse to account for the change in 
the mass of a people who has preserved no vestige of the activity 
and power of its ancestors. Private charity, so wisely inculcated 
by the Gospel, but which, in its application, ought to be guided 
with discernment by the legislators and the expounders of Divine 
law, has contributed not a little, in countries where industry has 
received no impulse, to encourage laziness and depravity, and even 
crimes, to which it may lead the lower classes. Who has not re- 
marked the arrogance with which the beggar demands the price 
of his importunity? He thinks his destitution gives him a right to 
the charity he implores. This idea leads to another — that beggary 
is a trade, a kind of lawful occupation ; shame has no longer access 
to his soul f and if charity procures him a subsistence, he prefers it 
to work. But, between that first idea of begging without shame, 
and that of demanding charity with a threat, there is too slight a 
shade to be observed by the man without conscience and without 
education. We cannot, therefore, feel astonished if in those coun- 
tries where mendicity has become a profession, highway robbery 
has also been followed as a profitable trade. Those great plague- 
spots of Italy, brigandage and mendicity, are spread over the 
kingdom of Naples, as well as over the Papal States. Every man 
carries a carabine, and hangs round his neck the image of the Virgin 
or of the holy child Jesus ! 3 " 

I. Sisiuondi, vol. xvi. p, 437. —'2* Lady Morgan, vol. i, p. 376. — 3. Malte-Brun, vol. vn, 
p. 415. 



174 



What is most singular is. to behold this people refusing to work, 
yet ending by regarding amid the national indolence this organised 
brigandage as an acknowledged profession. In order to render it 
lawful, they have placed it under the protection of Heaven. The 
Church is commercial; the priest sells salvation under every form; 
the friar begs in the. name of his convent. 

'•'At Genoa/'* says Lady Morgan. " we met a band of pilgrims, of 
both sexes., returning from Loreito to their native montaius of the 
Abbruzzi. The staff and scallop-shell hat, the shewy rosary and 
glittering cross, gave a most fantastic appearance to these devotees, 
who were trudgiug on merrily and noisily, absolved from all their 
sins, and (by the fierce looks of the men, and the looks not fierce 
of the women) disposed to open a new account with the Virgin, 
at whose shrine they had been so lately purified K" 

" Loretto, the holiest and poorest of cities, consists almost entire- 
ly of little shops and vast ecclesiastical edifices : the former are 
the bijouteries of the Church, exclusively devoted to the sale of 
religious trinkets, rosaries of every quality , texture, and value, from 
the string of wooden or glass beads to rov, s of amber and other pre- 
cious materials; crucifixes in tin, copper, or gold, and reliquaries 
and relics of ilowers, feathers, of eyes or noses; in a word, whatever 
can please or pacify Heaven in a material form, or supply the 
craving of the devout pilgrim and curious traveller V 5 

If we change the place and the writer, we shall not change the scene : 
" The inferior classes of the people of Rome, " says M. Britiault, 
"stand in need more than elsewhere of the comforts procured by la- 
bour; but the Church, as I have seen, encourages idleness by the 
number of its fetes ; she nurses, by vain hopes addressed to heaven, 
disdain and carelessness of more tangible interests, aud the greater 
part of the population is delivered up without defence to the mise- 
ries by which it is overcome. The money which could be employed 
by the poor in procuring comfortable clothing, in wholesome food, 
and habitation, is absorbed by the contributions, by the offerings, 
and by the long series of devotional exactions. The rest is 
expended in the extravagance and dissipation of dissolute pleasures, 
and also in the certain vanities of dress. And thus it is that in 
this pious city, so full of the ministers of a religion whose one 
great precept is that of charity, we find an entire population driven 
by fever and consumption to the hospitals, whose funds no longer 
suffice for the maintenance of these vast multitudes of stricken 



i. Lack Morgan, vol. iv, p. "00. —2. 7J«», pp. 304. 305. 



175 



poor 1 . Dn ring the daytime, the beggar will devour with hypocr i tical 
avidity all that is given to him; hut, at night, in his hovel, he 
will give himself up to all the frenzies of orgic. This abject race 
mix up with their trade of beggary rapine, espionage, and intrigue. 
The mendicant friars, who belong to the begging orders, think 
themselves authorised to penetrate by sheer impudence into every 
house where they hope to fill their knapsacks ; their profession 
completes that of their accomplices, the street mendicants V 

Monks have furnished the beggars; the beggars have furnished 
the brigands : "At the very gates of Rome the country is infested 
by the armed attempts of brigands. From within the robbers from 
without receive those indications which make known to them the 
departure of the richest forigners; these indications are always 
of the most scrupulous exactitude; the road they are about to take, 
the value of they property they bear with them, the designation of 
their persons, their fortune, their situation, and that of their fa- 
milies, are all carefully set down in the notice transmitted by that 
part of the Roman population which lives at the expense of the 
foreigners thus delivered up to the fury and rapacity of the robbers. 

i( Between the Italians of Rome and their base perfidy, and the 
audacity of the brigands of the country, there exists the same differ- 
ence as that between a highway robber and a pickpocket. The 
result is, to drive this brigandage more slowly away from Italy than 
from any other Catholic country of Europe ; and that, of all the 
Italian countries, the Papal States remain the most infested by bri- 
gands, and where they will be extirpated with the greatest difficulty. 
A better education, good examples, less encouragement of supersti- 
tion, and above all an incitement to labour, would spare to the 
people of Rome all the misery propagated by ignorance and credu- 
lity which the Romish clergy cultivate in the hearts and minds of 
their Hocks with a guilty connivance V 

If you feel tempted to place this idleness to the score of climate, 
remember the people of Ancient Rome, and read these lines of 
Malte-Brun : <e Agriculture, enterprise, and labour, if encouraged 
in Sicily, might be made to nourish, as in the time of the Romans, 
a population triple its actual numbers; but how many obstacles 
must be vanquished before they can be carried to the degree of 
prosperity of which they are susceptible ! The nobility must first 
of all show the example of a great reform ; and, what is more diffi- 
cult, perhaps, they must be made to feel its value. Idleness and 



1. BriQklltj p. 203. — 2. Idem, p. 207. — 3. Idem, p. 214, 213, 



mendicity would suffer, no doubt; the number of monks would 
gradually diminish, and we should then be able to judge whether 
certain factories, in a country where none exist, might not be made 
to replace with advantage some few of the convents, whose nura- 
i hers are out of all proportion with the population. The island 
actually possesses 28,000 monks and 18,000 nuns : in all, 4-6,000 
'useless individuals out of a population of 1,650,000 souls; that 
,ib«to say, one idle monk amongst every 35 inhabitants 1 ." 
. yif any doubt could still exist that these evils are the fatal conse- 
quence of the Church of Rome, it would be sufficient, in order to 
convince the reader of the contrary, to find them in every other 
country submitted to the same religious rule. There are certain 
expressions which can only apply to Catholic countries, and refuse 
to connect themselves with a Protestant people. In vain you endea- 
vour to represent to your imagination the idea of the banditti of 
England, or the swarms of American mendicants ; while the mind 
accepts without difficulty the expression of the swarming beggars 
of Ireland or Italy, the bands of brigands of Spain, Naples, or the 
Roman States ; and, more conclusive still, we find the same plagues 
to exist in every essentially Catholic State. The reader will remem- 
ber, no doubt, that we have seen the same dirt, squalor, and 
idleness in Ireland, in Brazil, in Spain, that we behold in Italy. 
We have discovered the same troops of brigands in South America 
and in Spain that we have found in Italy. One exception exists : 
no brigandage is admitted in Ireland. This exception, however, 
rather confirms the rule, for there it is Protestant Eugland whose 
police keeps the highway. If murder now and then escapes 
unpunished, it is thanks to the Catholic population, who connive 
at the murder by hiding the assassin from his judges : a false sen- 
timent of patriotism, inculcated by the priests. Nevertheless, the 
destitution of a few millions of men, not to be repressed like bri- 
gandage, continues naturally to develope itself in Ireland as in 
Italy. 

But let our authorities speak once more. We ought, in order 
to fill the frame we have set before our readers, present them with 
a picture of the prosperity of Italy; this picture will bear the tints 
of ignorance, brigandage, and squalid destitution, and signed by its 
composer, Superstition. 

Malte-Brun speaks in these terms of Sicily : " The agents of 
the government are all professed smugglers ; the monks direct the 



1. Malte-Brun, vol. vn, p. 452. 



177 




education of the children, and govern the domestic relations of 
the families, while their conduct is as disorderly as in the sixteenth 
century. Bribery had, until -very lately, succeeded in protecting 
robbery in Sicily, as well as in the kingdom of Naples, and some 
parts of the islands were regular repairs for the concealment 
banditti. The government has at length come forward to 
the safety of travellers. In every district they name a ca 
chosen from among the richest landowners; they place athj|$is£ 
posal fourteen horsemen, well-mounted, well-paid, and chosej^^^^?^ '1 
greater security, from amongst the most intrepid of the brigan^ jt^;; ^'*f 
Under an enlightened government the Two Sicilies would present aS*J^ 
very different spectacle to that which they now offer : it would be an 
easy task to destroy the seeds of idleness which spread such 
misery among the people, and multiplies the convents of both sexes. 
In the last few years, the number of men devoted to religious 
seclusion was estimated at 11,600, of women 9,300, and of 
priests 26,300 V' 

Here are a few lines from the pen of M. Cambry, upon this ab- 
sence of all prosperity : 

<c Unhappy people of Italy, to what an abject state of slavery has 
thy superstition led thee ! What infection and pestilence at Ber- 
gamo ! How can men live for a single hour amid the nauseous 
filth everywhere to be met with in the streets, the palaces, the 
churches ; where the most filthy objects lie beneath your feet, pol- 
lute the richest galleries, where the air is never admitted. Debased 
people of Italy ! you have succeeded in dishonouring the richest 
country in the world ; and if population and liberty do not penetrate 
amongst you, we shall one day behold Tuscany deserted, and Rome 
without inhabitants ! 2 It would seem as if Popery drew from hu- 
man nature one-third of its strength and virtue 3 . What infection 
at Padua! Beneath this beautiful sky, amid these fertile plains, 
everything is destroyed by filth, by stupidity, and ignorance *. The 
Grimani palace at Venice, on the Grand Canal, was one of those by 
which I was the most struck. These rich fabrics only serve to 
shew more fully the destitution and degraded state of the surround- 
ing houses. Insolent grandeur, squalid misery, princes and 
beggars, priests and cripples, are the contrasts often to be met with 
in Italy. The middle class trembles and crawls, living by lawsuits, 
by meanness, and by swindling. Filth reigns triumphant in 
Italy. Happy Benedictins ! enjoy in silence the delights that igno- 

1. MaUe-Brnn, vol. vn, pp. 474, 477.-2. Cambry, vol. n, pp. Ill, 112. —3, idem, p. 121. 
- 4. Idem, p. ICO. 

T. II. 12 



178 



ranee and superstition have secured to you; go on, with your Se- 
nate, your intrigues, and efforts against the bold impertinence of 
reason which threatens despotism and lies l . " 

One quotation more from Lady Morgan, ere we conclude : 
' ' But those deeply touched by the fate of living Italy turn alter- 
nately from the Paradise of the natural scenery to the wretched, 
ragged groups, who, stretching forth their squalid forms from the 
black dens of Passignano, give the first specimens of the condition 
of the subjects of the Papal dominions 2 . Yet here we found a friar 
begging from beggars. Groups of monks and beggars duly notified 
our entrance into that State, for ages supposed to be under the im- 
mediate dominion of the Deity, and governed by the Vice-regent of 
c Christ on earth. * Nature was still the same, bountiful and beau- 
tiful !... but there was a visible change in the physiognomy of the 
people. The Tuscan freshness, as well as the Tuscan competency, 
had wholly disappeared. A few haggard-looking women were per- 
forming the field-labours of men : the men (and there were but 
few visible) were loitering listlessly, muffled to their chins in dark 
and ragged mantles; and both closely resembled the Irish peasantry 
in form, expression, and all the exterior of poverty and wretched- 
ness. As we passed along, all held out their hands in silent suppli- 
cation for charity ; a habit universally prevailing in the Roman 
States 2 . But this tract, where imperial temples and triumphal 
arches lined the broad Flaminian way, is now awfully desolate and 
dangerously depopulated 3 . The French cleared up these forests, 
and in many places burnt them up, as the most efficient means of 
getting rid of the bands they sheltered; and during their govern- 
ment this evil, which, with many others, had so long infested the 
devoted land, was nearly done away, but it reappeared almost 
instantaneously on their expulsion 4 . " 

"When the season of the malaria arrives (Neppi), the inn- 
keeper and his family, and all who can shut up their houses and de- 
part, leave this sad abode to the old and feeble, who stay to die or 
to survive a little longer the victims of this annual plague. From 
Neppi, the desert opens in all its heart-chilling sadness ; trees 
dwindle and disappear, shrubs diminish , and the Campagna begins 
from its extremest verge in striking dreariness, and fades into the 
remote horizon in unvaried desolation. Here rises no monastic 
palace ; here wanders no mendicant monk. The Church has long 
withdrawn from the traveller's view. She is found again at Rome, 

1. Cambry, vol. ir, pp. 189 to 191, — 9. Lady Morgan, vol. in, p. 174. — 3. Mem, p. 175. 
h. Idem,]}. 206. 



179 



under gilded domes and velvet canopies. But here all that is 
known of her existence appears in the waste she has made 1 . The 
Pantheon is now the very comble of had taste. The darkest super- 
stition likewise prevails in all its ornaments and decorations, and 
the temple of all the gods seems, at the first glance,, to serve the 
purposes of an old-clothes shop. The six tawdry chapels, with their 
colossal virgins and Patagonian saints, which rise between the 
beautiful pilasters, are covered with offerings that indicate, in very 
disgusting signs, the moral and physical infirmity of the votarists ; 
and tin noses and wooden legs, old wigs and woollen petticoats, 
while they disfigure some of the most beautiful proportions of art, 
indicate a state of society the most degraded by ignorance and bi- 
gotry, and illustrate the falsity of the assertion that Modern Rome 
ever has been the instrument of communicating to Europe those 
greatest blessings of which human nature is susceptible : civilisation, 
science, and religion. Let those who have visited her Pantheon 
on a Christmas Eve, or read her index, judge 2 . " 

"In the midst of this imposing display of church magnificence 
sauntered or reposed a population which displayed the most squalid 
misery. The haggard natives of the mountains, the labourers who 
had that night deserted their cabins of straw and furze on the Cam- 
pagna, to avail themselves of the saturnalia and slumber upon 
precious marbles, were mixed with the whole mendicity of Rome, 
seeking one night's shelter beneath a roof for heads accustomed to 
crouch beneath open porticoes and projecting doorw T ays. Some of 
these terrific groups lay stretched in heaps on the ground, congre- 
gating for warmth ; and as their dark eyes scowled from beneath 
the mantle which half hid a sheepskin dress, they had the air of 
banditti awaiting their prey 3 . *' 

" With no moral law to check, with no religious feeling to re- 
strain, loosened from the potency of opinion, and tempted to the 
last lure of seduction, that the Italians throughout all Italy should 
pass their Carnival more in frailty than in crime, more in folly than 
in licentiousness, is one among many proofs of the inherent ten- 
dency towards good, the gentle, genial organisation of that amiable 
and much traduced people. Love is no sin in Italy. Neither tfie 
law, the religion, nor the customs of the land, restrain its impulses, 
nor limit its ranges : and if love is not the sole business of the 
Carnival, it at least places a large capital in the venture. The rest 
is all idle amusement and puerile pleasures 4 . " " The shops of 

1. Lady Morgan, vol. in, p. 210. — 2. Idem, p. 241. — 3. idem, vol. iv, pp. 14 and 15. — 

4. Idem, pp. 27, 28. 



180 



Rome are then gaily lighted; and the jnzzicaroli, the faithful allies 
of the Church, now offer ' food for meditation ' to the hungry de- 
votees, whose long fasts are about to be recompensed by repletion. 
In one shop we saw Saint Paul irradiated by a glory of sausages ; and 
in another the ill-boding bird of Saint Peter hung up with the apostle 
it had warned in vain; Madonnas curiously carved in butter, and 
Bambinos in lard, warmed the devotion of the inward man; and 
every eatable of plastic consistence, or of malleable form, was pressed 
into the service of architectural decoration and symbolic piety 

" Let him (the traveller in Rome), examine the vortex of Euro- 
pean wealth, sunk into abject poverty; let him remark the silent 
desolation of the streets, the poisonous solitude of the environs ; let 
him view the fading splendour of the palaces, the accumulating 
ruins of the meaner edifices ; let him mark the total absence of 
commerce, the hopeless straggle of lingering industry; let him 
watch the melancholy dejectedness of the lower classes, the com- 
placent satisfaction of look of the prelates; the hypocritical but 
cunning obsequiousness of the priest, the more timid and servile 
humiliation of gesture of the laymen ; let him observe the destitu- 
tion of the multitudinous mendicants, and the freezing discomfort 
of the nobles beggared by the mismanagement of their overgrown 
properties : in short, let him extend his glance through every rank 
of society, from the Pope to the mendicant friar, from the senator 
of Rome to the lay beggar, and let him ask himself in which of the 
classes of Roman citizens he would willingly and preferably enrol 
himself. " 

" In no part of Europe has tyranny obtained so durable, so per- 
fect, and so unalloyed a possession as in the Eternal City ; and the 
very longevity of which it boasts, while it has accumulated on its 
head all the physical evils of a too prolonged existence, has con- 
centred in its constitution all the social imperfections, all the abuses, 
errors, and absurdities of authority and prescription 2 . " 

These begging habits are such, that the Pope's soldiers are even 
affected by them : 

" The huts of the patrols continue to increase in dreariness, as 
their inhabitants are deeper steeped in misery. Many of these sol- 
diers of St. Peter were without shoes, and did not scruple to beg a 
paul from us as we passed. From those to whom we spoke at the 
post-house we heard a dreadful account of their sufferings, attested 
by their swollen and jaundiced appearance 3 . " 

i. Lady Morgan, vol. IV, pp. 64, 63, — 2. Idem, p. 79. — 3. hhm, p. 100. 



181 

About to close this study on the state of Catholic Italy, we beg 
permission not to pronounce our own judgment, but to provoke that 
of the reader by a few questions. Would you choose Calabria as a 
residence ? would you accept a Neapolitan woman for your wife, or 
her cav alter e servcnte for your friend? Have you ever had a thought 
of pursuing commerce at Venice, or literature at Rome? Would 
you entrust your honour, your fortune, to those mendicant monks, 
to those Jesuit priests, nay, even to those Cardinals seated at the 
theatre with dissolute women? I do not hesitate to declare that 
your answer would be a sad condemnation of the miserable state of 
Italy. And who is to be accused of these frightful evils? Is it the 
country itself, the soil, the climate? No ; in that unhappy land, 
everything from the hand of the Almighty is bright and brilliant ; 
everything beneath the control of man wretched and miserable. 
Are we bound to accuse the present race of Italians? History pro- 
tests against the accusation. The name of Roman awakens two 
distinct ideas, whether we apply it to the days of Ancient or of 
Modern Rome; that is to say, as one remembers the man of nature 
still Pagan, or the man of civilisation perverted by Romanism . The 
Italians of the middle ages struggling against the Papal power, 
throwing off the yoke, and living under a Republic, bear witness to 
the worth of this people. Au resic, our authors have rendered ho- 
mage to the Italian character : hear JV1. de Sismondi : " The Italians 
are nourished from infancy to old age with the poison of corruption; 
their energy has been destroyed, their minds condemned to inac- 
tion, their pride humiliated, their sincerity destroyed. A profound 
pity for the fate of this nation, so richly endowed by Nature, so 
cruelly debased by man, mnst be the result of this examination. 
In seeking the cause which has inoculated a whole people with vice, 
we become more convinced that it is not inherent to its nature, and 
we are more disposed to render homage to the few virtues which 
remain, to the few qualities still preserved from the pernicious in- 
fluence of surrounding causes. Not a single vice have we unveiled 
in the institutions of Modern Italy but should be excused in the 
Italians *. " 

It is to Popery alone, therefore, that we must attribute the shame 
of the actual state of Italy ; it is the work, the legitimate offspring, 
the exclusive pupil, of the Papal power. Whatever Popery is able 
to accomplish, has been accomplished in Italy. No opposition has 
been offered there. On the contrary, Popery has been enthroned; 



1. Sismondi, vol. xvi, p. 408. 



482 



princes and people have bowed before it as before an idol; and the 
head of Catholicism, armed with a triple tiara/ held as infallible. 
This Roman Caiphas, accepted as vice-God, has prepared and con- 
summated that vast ruin we have been contemplating. Popery is 
there surrounded by the most favourable circumstances ; therefore, 
it has accomplished the utmost of which it was capable. What 
would have become of it, opposed in its march, or persecuted by 
monarchs? We know not : but we are about to examine what has 
become of the Reformation in France, opposed in its development, 
persecuted by the Great Monarch, and we shall then possess a new 
and final element of comparison. 



PROTESTANTISM 

ON THE CROSS IN FRANCE. 



The reader will be astonished, perhaps, that, in this series of pa- 
rallels between nations, we should not have compared France with 
another country — England, for instance. Before we enter on our 
subject, we owe an explanation of our conduct in this respect. 

First, then, we have intentionally avoided making the compa- 
rison. It would have been impossible 1 . But, supposing this were 
not the case, still we should have felt it our duty to abstain. Our 
object is not to Hatter this or that nationality, but to show forth a 
broad truth, which shall be profitable for all people. 

It is easy to understand, besides, that the question might have 
become irritating. By reducing it to a personal subject, the author 

1. " A parallel lias been attempted between France and England; a writer lias proved tliat 
there are fewer accused persons in the former than in the latter of the two kingdoms; hence, 
the conclusion that intellectual enlightenment is not productive of good. But it should be borne 
in mind that the two countries are ruled by totally different laws; and a great number of tres- 
passes, which, in France, would have been considered as bailable offences, are classed, in 
England, amongst the crimes. In order to draw legitimate inferences, we should compare 
together crimes of the same nature. Thus, since the beginning of the present century, 25 per- 
sons at most are reckoned annually in England as convicted of having shed the blood of their 
fellow-creatures, whilst, in France, every year, between six and seven hundred wretches, 
guilty of murder or of assassination, either mount the scaffold or are sent, to the hulks. What 
a melancholy comparison for France ! And yet the penalty of death is inflicted there far less 
often than in England. Thus, in 1825, only 134 individuals were condemned to death by the 
French laws, whilst in England no less than 1,036 received the same sentence (we should 
add that 50 alone amongst them were executed)." 

Quetelet's Recherches stali&tiqucs sur le royaume des Pays-Bas, p. 31. 

M. Quetelet, whose language we quote, is neither a Protestant, nor an Englishman. He is 
a Belgian Boman Catholic. 



would have composed his work, and the reader perused it, under 
the impression of a spirit of partiality. 

It is not at a moment like the present, when the two nations are 
united in one common cause, and when their hlood is about to flow 
on the same battle-field — it is not then, especially, that we would 
raise the slightest irritation between them, merely for the purpose 
of gratifying the national vanity either of the one or of the other. 

We have, in the next place, a still stronger motive for not 
making a comparison, which has already been drawn by so many 
writers. In a special point of view, the parallel is not possible. 
For, if England is essentially Protestant, France cannot be said to 
be essentially Catholic. The French receive baptism at the hands 
of the priest, they are married by the ministry of the priest, 
they bury their dead with the authority of the priest; but, never- 
theless, the nation is not inspired by Catholicism ; it does not act 
from it; Catholicism is not the substance of her every-day life. 

" France, " says M. Quinet, " has declared upon several occa- 
sions that she separates her own destiny from the destiny of her 
Church. She does not consent to take any substitute for it, but 
she very cautiously declines beforehand linking Her own fortune 
with that of Catholicism. Whilst refusing to tolerate any other 
form of worship, she will not pledge herself to accept Catholicism 
as the ideal of her political faith. 

" Strange reserve ! or, rather, precocious distrust of what some 
people call the liberties of the Gallican Church ! At the very mo- 
ment that her faith is strongest, France only gives up to Catholi- 
cism the one-half of herself, as if she already foresaw that this is 
not the faith in which she must remain. The Church on one side, 
France on the other. If the first becomes weak, the second is not 
bound to it; the nation preserves in its midst the spirit of the 
past, but resolves not to listen to it. A strange treaty, full of sus- 
picion, and which can alone explain how our country, without 
receiving Protestantism, has been able to escape from what Saint- 
Simon calls the gnawing cancer of Rome i . " 

We repeat, then, that France, taken as a whole, is not Catholic; 
if she is anything in religion', she is deistical; and this is why 
France cannot be included within the circle of our comparisons be- 
tween Romanism and the Reformed Religion. 

We admit, at the same time, that some of the provinces, Rri- 
tany, for instance, are really under the influence of the Popish 



i. Quinet, p. 312. 



1 85 

clergy. This is a fact which we shall avail ourselves of for the 
purpose of comparing those parts of France with the districts in 
which Protestantism has many adherents; thus, instituting a real 
parallel between French Protestants and French Catholics. 

With this view we might have followed for France the course 
we have already adopted in our account of Switzerland; but here 
another difficulty meets us. With the exception of the extreme 
parts in which Catholicism and Protestantism do not intermingle, 
we must acknowledge that elsewhere, on the contrary, influences 
exist which, acting either for good or for evil, will not allow us any 
longer to consider Catholics and Protestants as forming two distinct 
camps. The comparison between the Frenchmen of both churches 
must, therefore, in our work, be only a secondary argument. 
As the title of this chapter sufficiently points out, the history of 
persecuted Protestantism is the main point to which our attention 
is invited : we shall examine it at once. 

We are not, of course, about to give here the history of the 
French Protestants, but merely to state the persecutions they 
have suffered, and the manner in which they endured them. For 
this purpose, we need only quote from the work of M. Charles 
Weiss, professor at the Lycee Bonaparte. 

With a view to brevity, we shall retrace our steps only as far 
back as "the Edict of 1620, which re-established the Catholic 
religion within the dominion of Jeanne d'Albret. In vain did the 
parliament of Pau protest against this edict. Louis XIII declared 
that he would go himself and have it registered, and that he 
would be stopped neither by the advanced season, nor by the po- 
verty of the Landes, nor by the ruggedness of the mountains. He 
kept his word ; and after having completely changed the organisa- 
tion of that province, so long the hotbed of Protestantism in the 
south, he returned to Paris, where the people greeted him with 
cries of joy l . " 

" The defection of Lesdiguieres having replaced the Dauphine in 
the monarch's power, he dismissed all Protestant governors of for- 
tresses, and replaced them by Catholics. In the other provinces 
the Protestants remained exposed to the hatred of governors, mili- 
tary commandants, priests, and populace. Civil war shortly after 
covered France with ruins. It was at first concentrated around 
Castres and Montauban; and such was the exasperation of the 
royal troops, that soon, in all the environs of those towns, there 

1. Weiss's History of the French Protestant Refugees, translated by Frederick Hardmaii: 
London and Edinburgh, W. Blackwood, p. 16. 



186 



remained neither corn nor fruit-trees, vines nor houses. Every- 
thing had been burned. All the Protestants who were within 
reach in the two towns of Toulouse and Bordeaux were pitilessly 
massacred l . " 

We behold, then, the French Protestants in a position similar to 
that of the Irish Roman Catholics. Both are persecuted by their 
respective governments. We know to what depths of misery the 
Irish Catholics sank; we have witnessed their neglect of agricul- 
ture, their idleness, their frightful poverty. Is the same sight 
offered to us by the equally persecuted Protestants? No : iC Gra- 
dually excluded from court employments, and from almost all 
civil posts, it was fortunately impossible for them to impoverish 
themselves by luxury and idleness. Compelled to apply them- 
selves to agriculture, trade, and manufactures, they abundantly 
compensated themselves for their former restraints. The vast 
plains they possessed in Beam and the western provinces were 
covered with rich harvests. In Languedoc, the cantons peopled by 
them became the best cultivated and the most fertile, often in spite 
of the badness of the soil. Thanks to their indefatigable labour, 
this province, so long devastated by civil war, arose from its ruins. 
On the Esperou, one of the highest ridges in the Cevennes, was re- 
marked a plain enamelled with flowers, and abounding in springs 
of water, which maintained a fresh vegetation during the sum- 
mers most ardent heat. The inhabitants called it the Hort-Diou, 
that is to say, the Garden of God. In the diocese of Nismes, the 
valley of Vaunage was celebrated for the richness of its vegetation. 
The Protestants, who possessed within its limits more than sixty 
temples, called it Little Canaan. The skilful vine-dressers of Berri 
restored its former prosperity to that district. Those of the Pays 
Messin became the elite of the population of more than twenty- 
five villages; the gardeners of the same province brought their art 
to a degree of perfection previously unknown 2 . " 

ei The Protestants who dwelt in towns devoted themselves to 
manufactures and trade, aud displayed an activity, an intelligence, 
and at the same time an integrity, which perhaps have never been 
surpassed in any country. In Guyenne, they took possession of 
almost the whole of the wine- trade ; in the two governments of 
Brouage and Oleron, a dozen Protestant families had the monopoly 
of the trade in salt and wine, which annually amounted to from 
1,200,000 to 1,500,000 francs. At Sancerre, by their persevering 



l. Weiss, pp. 20, 21. — 2. Idem, pp. 23, 25. 



187 



industry, and by the spirit of order that animated them, the Pro- 
testants became, as was admitted by the intendant, superior to the 
Catholics in numbers, wealth, and consideration . In the Generalite 
of Alencon, almost all the trade passed through the hands of about 
four thousand Protestants. Those of Rouen attracted to their 
town a host of wealthy foreigners, especially Dutch, to the great 
benefit of the country. Those of Caen resold to English and Dutch 
merchants the linen and woollen cloths manufactured at Vire, Fa- 
laise, and Argentan, thus insuring a rich market to that branch of 
national manufactures. The important trade that Metz maintain- 
ed with Germany was almost entirely in the hands of the Hugue- 
nots of that department. Accordingly, the governor said to the 
minister of Louis XIV, e They hold the trade in their hands, and are 
the richest of the people/ The merchants of Nismes, renowned 
throughout the South of France, afforded means of subsistence to an 
infinity of families. e If the Nismes merchants/ wrote Baville (the 
intendant of the province) in 1699, e are still bad Catholics, at any 
rate they have not ceased to be very good traders. 9 " 

" It was also to the Protestants that France owed the rapid deve- 
lopment of its maritime trade at Bordeaux, La Rochelle, and the 
Norman ports. The French Protestants deserved their high re- 
putation for commercial probity. 

u Lost, in a manner, amongst a people who regarded them with 
distrust, unceasingly exposed to calumny, subjected to severe laws, 
which imperiously compelled them to perpetual self-watchfulness, 
they commanded public esteem by the austerity of their morals, 
and by their irreproachable integrity. By the avowal even of their 
enemies, they combined the qualities of the citizen — that is to say, 
respect for the law, application to their work, attachment to their 
duties, and the old parsimony and frugality of the burgher classes 
— with those of the Christian ; namely, a strong love of their reli- 
gion, a manifest desire to conform their conduct to their conscience, 
a constant fear of the judgments of God. 

u In high repute for their intelligence and commercial activity, 
they were no less so for their manufactures. More inclined to toil 
than the Catholics, because they could become their equals only 
through superiority of workmanship, they were further stimulated 
and seconded by the principles of their religion. These principles 
tended incessantly to instruct and enlighten them by leading them 
to faith only by the path of examination. Thence the superior en- 
lightenment necessarily found in their modes of action, and which 
rendered their minds more capable of seizing all the ideas whose 



4 88 

application might contribute to their wellbeing. The capital 
possessed by the Protestants enabled them to form and sustain great 
enterprises. In the provinces of Picardy, Champagne, Normandy, 
the Isle of France, in Touraine, the Lyonnais, and Languedoc, it 
was they who created the most important manufactures; and this 
was made evident by the rapid decline of those manufactures after 
the revocation of the edict of Henri IV. " 

" The recent invention of the stocking-loom multiplied the ma- 
nufactories of woollen, silk thread, and cotton stockings. The 
Protestants distinguished themselves no less in this new manufac- 
ture, which they extended especially in the Sedanais and in Lan- 
guedoc. A part of this province, the Upper Gevaudan, a mountain- 
ous and sterile country, peopled almost entirely by those, of the 
Reformed religion, found an unexpected and precious resource in 
the manufacture of cadis, and serge. Under this name were de- 
signated light stuffs, whose extreme cheapness insured them a 
market. All the peasants had in their houses looms for their ma- 
nufacture, at which they passed the whole of the time not devoted 
to the cultivation of their lands. Comfort prevailed in that little 
country, and extended itself from thence to the adjacent districts. " 

is The beautiful paper-manufactories in Auvergne and the An- 
goumois were also in their hands. They had mills at Ambert, at 
Thiers, and at Chamalieres, near Clermont. Those at Ambert pro- 
duced the best paper in Europe. The best printing of Paris, Amster- 
dam, and London was done upon the Ambert paper. This ma- 
nufacture supported a great number of families, and brought in 
every year more than 80,000 crowns. The manufactures of the 
Angoumois were not less nourishing and famous. Six hundred 
mills were at work in that province, and its papers rivalled those 
of Auvergne. " 

" It was the Protestants who gave to France the magnificent 
linen-manufactures that so long enriched her north-western pro- 
vinces. 

" The tanneries of Touraine were renowned throughout the 
whole of France. The Protestants had established more than four 
hundred in that industrious province. 

The silk manufactures of Tours and Lyons, so nourishing in the 
middle of the seventeenth century, owed nearly all their splen- 
dour to the industry of Protestant workmen *. " 

" The Protestant part of the French middle classes did not devote 



t. Weiss, vol. i, pp. 25 to 32. 



180 



itself entirely to commerce and manufactures, but entered the 
liberal professions. A great number of adherents of the Reform- 
ed religion distinguished themselves as physicians, lawyers, and 
writers, and powerfully contributed to the literary glory of 
Louis XIV's century. A Protestant advocate, Henry Basnage, the 
learned commentator of the Coutume de Normandie, led for fifty 
years the Rouen bar. His friend and contemporary, Lemery, the 
father of the illustrious chemist, of whose birth within her walls 
Rouen is to this day proud, fulfilled, in that same parliament, with 
rare distinction, the duties of procureur. Valentin Courat, at 
whose house literary men were accustomed to meet, drew out the 
letters-patent of the French Academy in 1635, at the time of its 
foundation, compiled its regulations, and was its first secretary. 
We may also name the celebrated Madame Dacier; Guy Patin, 
who deserves mention in our annals of learning as a man of letters, 
a philosopher, and a physician; and Pierre Dumoulin, equal 
to the best of our classical prose writers. These distinguished 
persons were all Protestants. The ministry of the Gospel could 
also bring forward eminent characters : Daille, concerning whom 
a Roman Catholic academician, said ( that his sermons were very 
learned, very eloquent, and very polished ; ' Drelincourt, re- 
nowned for the popular style of his preaching ; Allix, whose learn- 
ing was highly praised; Mestrezat, of whom Cardinal de Retz 
speaks so flatteringly in his Memoirs ; Claude, who, more than all 
the others, was worthy, by reason of the rare vigour of his 
mind, by his close logic, and sometimes by his eloquence, of 
combating at the head of his party; at Montpellier, Michael Le- 
faucheur; at Caen, Pierre Dubosc; at Metz, David Ancillon; in 
Normandy, Dufeugueray, Lherondel, and de Larroque; and at 
a later period de Langle, Legendre, and especially Jacques 
Basnage, who published so many learned works which his own 
century admired, and ours still esteems. 

" The synods favoured this literary movement. The four aca- 
demies of Saumur, Montauban, Nismes, and Sedan, were watched 
by them with jealous care, and soon the reputation of the schools 
spread into foreign countries, so that not only many Dutch 
preachers, but princes of the house of Brandenburg, went to study 
there. Joachim Sigismond studied at Sedan; John George at 
Saumur. Montauban, which in France was the stronghold of the 
doctrine of Calvin, as, in Germany, Wittemberg was of that of 
Luther, produced Garissolles, Chamier, Berault; from that of Sau- 
mur, founded by Mornay, came forth Cappel, Amyraut, Saint- 



190 



Maurice, Desmarets, Tanneguy-Lefevre ; from that of Sedan, Du 
Rondel, Bayle, Jurieu, Dumoulin. 

" In all the principal towns of the kingdom the Protestants sup- 
ported colleges, of which the most flourishing were those of 
ISismes, Bergerac, Beziers, Die, Caen, Orange. 

ee A portion of the Protestant nobility took part in that literary 
movement which was the purest and most durable glory of 
Louis XIV's century. The Duke of Montausier, the Marquis of 
Dangeau, the Counts of Lude, the Saint-Blancards, the Lords of 
Cerisy, Count de Gassion, Marshal Guebriand, Marshal Rantzau, 
Marshal Duke de la Force, the Duke of Rohan, and Marshal Cha- 
tillon. All these illustrious generals, and a host of officers who 
fought under their orders, belonged to the Reformed religion 1 ." 

(( When they saw the prosperity of the Protestants, the enemies 
of the Reformation thought no doubt that the blows they had dealt 
to their victim had not been strong enough. They then levelled 
the club of persecution at that bruised head whose wounds seemed 
to be healing. Soon an order in council appeared, forbidding Pro- 
testants to bury their dead, save at daybreak or nightfall. In 1663, 
newly-converted Protestants were dispensed from payment of debts 
to their former co-religionists. Old and barbarous laws against 
converts who relapsed into the Reformed faith were revived and 
enforced. Then was once more seen the hideous spectacle of 
corpses drawn upon hurdles amidst the outrages of the populace. 
All who had abjured Protestantism, and who, upon their death- 
beds, refused the sacraments of Rome, were condemned to this 
shameful treatment. In 1664, all the letters of freedom granted 
to Protestants were annulled. A new order prohibited the reception 
as sempstress of any woman who did not profess the Catholic reli- 
gion. In i665, priests were authorised to present themselves, 
accompanied by the magistrate of the place, at the bedside of dyirj : ; 
Protestants, to exhort them to conversion ; and if they appeared 
disposed to it, the work was to be proceeded with, in spite of any 
opposition otfered by the family. 

' ■ Already several professions were closed to Protestants. The 
law often entailed the ruin of their fortunes, and carried disturb- 
ance into their families, by pursuing them even on their deathbed 
with odious controversies. Thenceforward not a month passed 
without some fresh act of rigour. Protestants were forbidden to 
abandon the country, and those already settled abroad were recal- 



i. Weiss, vol. i, pp, 33 to 39. 



I'll 



led. The physicians of Rouen were forbidden to receive into their 
corporation more than two persons of the Reformed religion. 
Schoolmasters were prohibited from teaching the children of Pro- 
testants anything but reading, writing, and ciphering. In 1671, 
it was ordered that not more than one school and one master 
should be allowed to exist in the places where the exercise of their 
religion was still permitted. 

" Thus were the Protestants assailed in the daily exercise of 
their religion, in the education of their children, in the discipline 
of their families. 

After the suppression of the semi-Protestant courts of law, it was 
nothing uncommon, in purely civil causes, to hear the Catholic 
invoke this argument : I plead against a heretic ; " and when 
the Protestant complained of an unjust sentence, " Your remedy is 
in your own hands, " coldly replied the judge; "why do you not 
become a convert ? " 

" Now they interdicted Protestant worship in a town in which a 
bishop was on a visit • then they affirmed that it was impossible to 
endure the scandal of a Protestant preaching-house in the neigh- 
bourhood of a Catholic church. The former was accordingly de- 
molished, and its reconstruction was permitted only in some incon- 
venient and distant place. To add to all these vexations, ministers 
were forbidden to hold children's schools elsewhere than in the 
precincts of their temples, and thus were their young pupils 
compelled daily to perform long journeys to and from their studies. 
An edict of the 17th June, 1681, allowed children to return to 
the bosom of the church as early as at the age of seven years. 

" This law had terrible consequences. It undermined paternal 
authority in Protestant families. It now sufficed that an envious 
person, an enemy, a debtor, declared before a tribunal that a child 
wished to become a Catholic, had manifested an intention of enter- 
ing a church, had joined in a prayer, or made the sign of the 
cross, or kissed an image of the Virgin, for the child in question 
to be taken from his parents, who were compelled to make him an 
allowance proportioned to their supposed ability. But such esti- 
mates were necessarily arbitrary, and it often happened that the 
loss of his child entailed upon the unfortunate father that of all his 
property. 

" The Academy of Saumur, which had existed for eighty years, 
and was the most celebrated of all, was suppressed in the same 
year, on the pretext that its foundation had not been authorised by 
letters-patent It was sought, by these means, to obliterate that 



mental distinction and literary cultivation remarkable in the Pro- 
testants, and which excited the jealousy of their adversaries. 

"Barristers were forbidden to plead, on pretence that they abused 
their influence to prevent the conversion of their clients. Two 
months were allowed to all who still held employments at Court, or 
judicial offices, or who practised as attorneys and notaries, to sell 
their places or business. Physicians were not allowed to exercise 
their profession, because, it was said, they did not Avarn the Ca- 
tholic patients when the moment came for the administration of 
the sacraments. This prohibition was extended to surgeons, apo- 
thecaries, and even to midwives, accused of sacrificing, in danger- 
ous childbirths, the infant to the mother, at the risk of letting it 
die without baptism, and of thus exposing it to eternal damnation. 
Printers and booksellers were ordered to discontinue their trade 
under penalty of 3000 livres' fine. Domiciliary visits were ordered 
at the dwellings of the booksellers, ministers, and elders, to seize 
and destroy all copies of works that attacked the dominant religion. 

" To deprive the pastors of the moral influence which long resi- 
dence and a spotless life might give them over the minds of their 
congregations, they were forbidden to exercise their holy office for 
more than three years together in the same place. 

" Up to that time the property and the liberty alone of the Pro- 
testants had been invaded; now their persons were attacked. The 
government sent dragoons to those towns in Poitou which contain- 
ed most Huguenots. They were lodged exclusively in their houses, 
and even in those of the poorest, and of widows previously exempt 
from that onerous charge. In many towns and villages the priests 
followed them in the streets , crying out — ( Courage gentlemen ! 
It is the king's intention that these dogs of Hnguenots should be 
pillaged and sacked.' The soldiers entered the houses with 
uplifted swords, sometimes crying. ' Kill ! kill! ' to frighten the 
women and children. As long as the inhabitants had wherewithal 
to satisfy them, they were but pillaged ; but when their means 
were exhausted, when the price of their furniture was spent, and 
the clothes and ornaments of their women were sold, the dragoons 
seized them by the hair to drag them to church; or, if they left 
them in their houses, they employed threats, outrage, and even 
tortures, to oblige them to become converts. Of some they burned 
the feet and hands at a slow fire ; they broke the ribs and limbs of 
others with blows of sticks. Several had their lips burned with 
red-hot irons ; and others were thrown into damp dungeons, with 
threats that they should be left there to rot. 



193 



" The soldiers of Beam, excited by the fanatic Marquis de 
Boufflers, showed themselves much more cruel than those in Poitou. 
They were marched from town to town, from village to village ; they 
were ordered to deprive of rest those who would not yield to other 
torments. The soldiers relieved each other, in order not themselves 
to sink under the torture they made others suffer. The noise of 
drums, the blasphemies, the shouts, the crash of the furniture 
which 1hey threw about, the agitation in which they kept those poor 
people in order to force them to remain up and with their eyes open, 
were the means employed to deprive them of repose. To pinch and 
prick them, to drag them about, suspend them by ropes, blow to- 
bacco smoke into their nostrils, and a hundred other cruelties, 
were the sports of these executioners. The officers were no better 
than the soldiers : they spat in the women's faces ; they made them 
lie down in their presence on hot embers ; they forced them to put 
their heads into ovens whose vapour was hot enough to suffocate 
them. 

" In the distribution of quarters, care was taken to separate the 
officers from the soldiers they commanded, that the latter might be 
unchecked by any sentiment of decency. The greater share of 
trade and manufactures was then in the hands of the Protestants ; 
their dwellings were adorned with costly furniture , their ware- 
houses were full of merchandise. All these riches were abandon- 
ed *+o the mercy of the soldiers, and destroyed by them. They 
were not content with taking what suited them; they tore and 
burned what they could not carry away. Some gave their horses 
fine Holland sheeting to lie upon, others converted storehouses full 
of bales of wool, cotton, and silk, into stables. It was determined 
to treat with the utmost rigour those who, according to the expres- 
sion of Louvois, 6 aspired to the foolish glory of being the last pro- 
fessors of a religion displeasing to his majesty.' 

" The victims were let down by cords into the prisons of the 
Chateau-Trompette, at Bordeaux, and daily drawn up to undergo 
whipping or the strappado. Several prisoners, after some weeks 
passed in the dungeons of Grenoble, came out without either hair 
or teeth. At Valence, they were thrown into a sort of well, in 
which, by a refinement of barbarous cruelty, sheep's entrails were 
left to putrefy. 

" The utmost cruelty was displayed against those amongst the 
Protestants who had been condemned to the galleys : ' The galley- 
slaves, 3 says Admiral Baudin, 6 were chained two-and-two upon 
the benches of the galleys, and employed to row with long heavy 

T. II. 13 



194 



oars In the axis oi' each galley, and in the centre of the 

space occupied by the benches of the rowers, was a sort of gallery, 
called the coursive, on which continually walked guardians, called 
comes, armed with whips of bullock's hide, with which they lashed 
the shoulders of those unfortunates who did not row with enough 
vigour to please them. The galley-slaves passed their lives on 
their benches; they ate and slept there, unable to change their 
place beyond what the length of their chain permitted, and having 
no other shelter than a cloth against the rain, or the sun's heat, 
or the chills of night 1 . ' " 

These dreadful persecutions were not more successful than the 
first in subduing the energy of the Protestants. Their only result 
was to remove from the kingdom that prosperity which the Catho- 
lics saw with an irritated and jealous eye. The Protestants became 
refugees. We shall now accompany them to the land of exile, 
and see the transplated tree bear the same fruits abroad as it had 
done at home. Truth is not the sap which} productive in one soil, 
may be powerless in another. Sent from heaven like the dew, 
it makes every ground teem under its fecundating energy. We 
may follow from realm to realm the Protestants armed with their 
Bible; everywhere we see them triumphing over misery, diffusing 
abroad the light of civilisation, and giving the example of moral 
conduct. 

In the first place, the distinguished military men whom the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes deprived France of were extremely 
numerous : " The Prince of Tarentum took service in the Dutch 
army, the Duke of La Tremouille in that of Hesse, Count de Roye in 
that of Denmark. Others went to Brandenburg, whither a con- 
currence of fortunate circumstances called them. To the Counts 
of Beauveau and de Briquemault, who set the example, were sub- 
sequently added Henry d'Hallard, a distinguished officer, Pierre de 
la Cave, governor of Pillau and major-general; Du Plessis Gouret, 
who became colonel and commandant of Magdeburg and Spandau, 
Count Henry de Montgommery, Colonel Dole-Belgard, and the Counts 
de Comminges, de Cadal, de Gressy. The number of officers vho 
retired into Brandenburg after the revocation may be estimated at 
more than six hundred : amongst them we may mention the Mar- 
quis de Varennes, who had the king for his godfather, and Lieu- 
tenant-Genera! Rouvillas de Veyne. 

" In 1785, a large number of cadets fled from the frontier towns, 



1. AVeiss, pp. 51, 77. 



m 

and scattered themselves through Holland and Brandenburg. The 
Prince of Orange and Frederick William formed whole companies 
of them. The muster-roll of these cadets shows us names that were 
not undistinguished : Fouquetj Beaufort, Beauchardis, La Salle, Du 
Perier, de Portal, Montfort, Saint-Maurice, Saint-Blancard. But 
of all the officers of high rank who quitted France, Marshal Schom- 
berg was the most illustrious. 

" The refugees could number, besides, several engineers, the most 
illustrious of whom, in Brandenburg, were Jean Cay art, a pupil of 
Yaubau, upon whom Louis XIV and Louvois had publicly bestow- 
ed the highest praise, and to whom they had intrusted the fortifica- 
tion of Verdun, and Philip de la Chiese, a native of Orange, who 
made the canal of Muhlrose, to connect the Spree with the Oder, 
and so to establish a communication between the North Sea and the 
Baltic. A few gentlemen may likewise be mentioned well known 
by the functions they discharged either as councillors of embassy, or 
as intrusted with the direction of ecclesiastical and civil affairs. Oli- 
vier de Marconnay, lord of Blanzay, a native of Poitou ; Jacques de 
Maxuel,lord of Deschamps, born at Pont-Audemer; Philip Choudens 
de Grema; Louis de Montagnac, formerly a king's councillor at the 
presidial court of Beziers ; Henry de Mirmand, the Baron de Fau- 
gieres, Baron Isaac de Larrey, the Marquis of Chandieu, Francis 
d'Agoust, Eleazar de la Primaudaye, and Baron Philip de Jaucourt V 

To conclude, merchants and workmen belonging to every species 
of trade scattered themselves throughout the whole world : 

"The town of Magdeburg, completely ruined by the Thirty 
Years' War, but admirably situated upon the bank of the Elbe, 
which facilitated its trade with Hamburg and the Dutch ports, re- 
ceived a colony of refugees, who contributed to repeople it, and who 
soon converted it into a rich focus of industry. Three brothers, 
Andrew, Peter, and Anthony Du Bosc, from Nismes; John Rafi- 
nesque, of Lizes ; and John MafFre, of Saint-Ambroise, established 
there a manufactory of cloth, of Rouen serge, and of druggets. 
Andrew Valentin, of Nismes, and Peter Glaparede, of Montpellier, 
manufactured woollen stmTs. Anthony Pellou and Daniel Pernet, 
from Burgundy, established a manufactory of woollen and beaver 
hats. The manufacture of stockings, so far advanced in France, 
was taken to Magdeburg by six refugees from the Vigan, directed 
by Pierre Labry. 

" The colony of Brandenburg became flourishing after the arri- 



1. Weiss, pp. 108, 116, 



196 



val of several Norman manufacturers, who made the cloths of Mu- 
rders, Elbeuf, and Spain. This branch of manufacture was espe- 
cially indebted for its celebrity to Daniel Le Cornu, of Rouen. 
Frankfort-on-the-Oder, so well situated for the Baltic trade, receiv- 
ed several manufacturers from the same town, who founded fine 
manufactories of cloth, aided by Luke Cossard, their countryman, 
who had been dyer to the Gobelins 1 . " 

" The reputation of the refugees for probity, and that practical 
piety which distinguished them nearly all, everywhere inspired 
confidence, and obtained them a degree of credit which insured 
the success of their enterprises, notwithstanding the slenderness of 
the funds at their disposal. Little by little they acquired fortunes, 
which enabled them to extend their transactions, and seek more 
distant markets. They formed connections with Poland, Russia, 
Denmark, Sweden, and the agencies they established in Copen- 
hagen, Hamburg, and Dantzig, opened to Brandenburg an inexhaus- 
tible source of wealth. 

" After the manufacture of woollens, that of hats was one of the 
most productive that the refugees introduced into Brandenburg. 
The Elector was naturally glad to make those industrious strangers 
welcome, who brought him a manufacture which would prevent 
considerable sums from leaving the country, and soon would bring 
in money from foreign lands. 

" The tanner's art was rendered perfect in Brandenburg by the 
refugees. They- established tanyards at Berlin, Magdeburg, Stettin, 
Potsdam; and soon they so fully supplied the country that the 
importation of leather from Silesia and the Northern States entirely 
ceased. 

" The arts of the shamoy-dresser and of the tawer, and that of 
the glover especially, were introduced into Brandenburg by the 
refugees, who likewise founded manufactures of silk, velvet, gold 
and silver brocade. They made ribbons, gold lace, and other 
fashionable articles, which before had been brought from Paris. 
Carpets and tapestry became, owing to the interest the Court took 
in them, important articles of a trade which engaged the industry 
of the exiled Protestants. 

" They contributed to bring to perfection the glass- worker's art, 
and they added a manufactory of mirrors, the first seen in the 
country. The Neustadt mirrors were equal to those of France and 
Venice, and had a considerable sale in Germany. 



1. Weiss, pp. 123, 1-24. 



197 



" Persecution also drove into Brandenburg a host of artisans skill- 
ed in every kind of craft ; miners from the comte of Foix, and from 
Dauphine, who took up the working of the iron and copper mines, 
with which the government had as yet hut little busied itself; 
men experienced in the fashioning of metals, armourers, polishers, 
locksmiths, and cutlers. In the very first years that followed the 
revocation, Berlin beheld the arrival within her walls of Frenchmen 
practising those two arts, who formed considerable establishments, 
and originated a traffic which never ceased to increase during the 
whole of the eighteenth century. The art of engraving, the lapi- 
dary's art, both imported by workmen from Languedoc, sprang 
from the same source. The use of clocks and watches did not 
extend through the Elector's dominions, and thence into neighbour- 
ing countries, until after the arrival of the working watchmakers 
from France. 

" Embroidery, in which France excelled, was taken to Berlin by 
four brothers from Paris. The first manufactures of printed cali- 
coes had the same origin ; gauze-makers came from Picardy, Nor- 
mandy, and Champagne. 

" At first the refugees sold retail, seeking an honest living rather 
than aspiring to wealth. Then they had neither cashier, book- 
keeper, nor clerk. It was the dealer himself, his wife, and his 
children, who filled all these departments. These simple customs, 
this severe economy, were the foundation of more than one large 
fortune. As their means increased, they sought to extend their 
connections. Soon they ceased to confine themselves to the home- 
trade, and frequented foreign markets. The trade in hardware, 
which has become so important since, owed its origin to the refu- 
gees. " 

In proportion as the national industry revived under the powerful 
impetus they gave to it, trade found new resources 1 : 

" Agriculture was not less indebted to the refugees than were 
trade and manufactures. Before their arrival, in all parts of Bran- 
denburg, the traveller's gaze rested upon vast monotonous plains, 
and upon land uncleared for lack of inhabitants. The colony of 
Bergholz owed to them the high degree of prosperity it ultimately 
attained. The villages of Gross-Ziethen and Klein-Ziethen, burned 
in the Thirty Years' War, were rebuilt by them, and the surround- 
ing country was cleared and cultivated for the first time since 
that calamitous period. The county of Ruppin, which had hard- 



l.$ Weiss, pp. 126, 133. 



198 



ly any inhabitants left, was cultivated by French labourers. The 
most important of the new branches of cultivation, by which the 
refugees enriched Brandenburg, was that of tobacco. A special 
service which these industrious men rendered to Brandenburg was 
the improvement — we may almost say the creation — of the art of 
gardening. They converted into gardens those vast suburbs of 
Berlin which as yet were but uncultivated fields. Such prodigies 
had never before been witnessed by the Berliners l . :> 

t{ The principal colony of the refugees was that of Cassel. That 
town, then of 18,000 inhabitants, living in rudely-constructed 
wooden houses, was indebted to its new guests for the flourishing 
state in which it soon found itself. They created numerous manu- 
factures previously unknown in that part of Germany. A profusion 
of goods, quite novel to the natives, were soon exposed for sale in 
handsome shops; and so great was the advantage to Cassel, that, in 
the year 1688, the old town no longer sufficed for the increasing 
population 2 . " 

" The Brandenburg refugees are still renowned for their tempe- 
rance and sobriety. They are all in confortable circumstances— a 
result due to labour. Hospitable to strangers, they afforded an 
asylum to unfortunate stragglers from the rout at Leipzig 3 . " 

" It appears certain that the revocation of the Edict of Nantes sent 
into the three kingdoms about 70, 000 manufacturers and workmen, 
most of whom proceeded from Normandy, Picardy, the maritime 
provinces of the west, the Lyonnais, and Touraine. 

" The English were indebted to them for the introduction of se- 
veral new manufactures, which soon contributed to the public 
wealth, and for the improvement of others still in their infancy. 
The refugees taught the English to manufacture superior qualities 
of paper for themselves, and, moreover, showed them how to pro- 
duce silks, brocades, satins, velvets, light tissues of linen and wool, 
clocks and watches, glass-ware, cutlery, hardware, French locks, 
and surgical instruments. 

" Of all the manufactures with which the refugees endowed Eng- 
land, not one acquired a more magnificent development than that 
of silks. England and Ireland then presented the memorable sight 
of a manufacture borrowed from the foreigner, consuming foreign 
materials, and which nevertheless succeeded in equalling, and even 
in surpassing, the products of those countries where it had long 
been cultivated. 



1, Weiss, pp. 126, 137, - 



2. Idem, pp. 188. 189, — 3. Idem, p. 192, 



199 

u The manufactures taken to England by the refugees, and the 
great development they attained, deprived France of an annual re- 
turn of ], 880,000^. sterling. 

' 1 Thus, English commerce profited by the impulse given by the 
refugees to the national manufactures, and the export trade of 
France received a fatal blow, from which it has not yet recovered V 

" The American colonies were largely remunerated for their wise 
and generous hospitality by the services the refugees rendered them. 
The .uncultivated banks of the river St. James were by them trans- 
formed into fields covered with rich harvests. All Virginia admir- 
ed the flourishing state of their model farms in the environs of 
Mannikin. In the State of New York, the founders of New La Ro- 
chelle recoiled from no fatigue that might render productive the 
virgin land on the banks of East River. Men, women, and children 
unceasingly laboured until they converted a wilderness into a smil- 
ing landscape, and in South Carolina they reared magnificent plan- 
tations on the banks of the Cooper The agricultural colony on 

the banks of the Santee surpassed ail those formed in the same pro- 
vince by the English, although these brought with them consider- 
able fortunes, and all that was necessary for the success of their 
plantations. The fugitive French hardly possessed the things in- 
dispensable to life ; most of them were not even accustomed to the 
kind of work ; and they had, moreover, to contend with a prover- 
bially unhealthy climate. But, stimulated by want, sober, indus- 
trious, ready to help one another, they succeeded more rapidly and 
completely. The English traveller Lawson, who visited their esta- 
blishments in 1701, admired the cleanliness and decency of their 
dress, the convenient arrangement of their solidly -constructed 
houses, and all the external signs of a prosperity much superior to 
that of the other colonists. He beheld with astonishment a country, 
recently covered with swamps, formed by the overflowing of the 
river, rapidly assuming the appearance of the best-cultivated parts 
of France and England. 6 The French colonists/ he said, c live like 
a tribe, like a family. Every one makes it a rule to assist his 
countryman, and to watch over his fortune and reputation as if 
they were his own. The misfortunes which assail one of them are 
shared by all the others, and every one rejoices in the progress and 
prosperity of his brethren. ' 

" The arrival of these honest and laborious men was a fortunate 
acquisition for the newly-founded colony of Charlestown. As in 



1. Weiss, pp. 251, 261. 



200 

England, the traditions of elegance and good taste, brought over by 
the artisan emigrants of 1685, were incessantly revived by the arri- 
val of fresh fugitives l . " 

Let us hear on this subject, not an historian, but an eye-witness, 
the American Mr. Baird : " The French Protestants formed a 
considerable element in the population of the American colonies ; 
hence their precious blood flows in the veins of many citizens of 
North America at the present day. One feels, besides, what a boon 
must have been conferred to the colonies through the arrival of 
those men, distinguished, generally, by their simple honest piety, 
and whose strong and lively faith was attested by their presence in 
America. To their posterity belong some of the best families in 
New York, Maryland, Virginia, Carolina, and other states besides. 

" Oat of the seven presidents which Congress had din ing the war 
of the Revolution, no less than three descended from the Huguenots, 
and all three were celebrated men : Jay, Laurens, and Boudinot. 
Never did any individuals better acknowledge the hospitality grant- 
ed to them. The names of French refugees appear with distinction 
amongst the great bodies of the state in our halls of judicature, in 
the ministry of the Gospel. No one need blush in America of hav- 
ing amongst his ancestors one of those respectable Huguenots, for 
it has been more than once observed, and the remark is, I belftve, 
correct, that nothing was ever more uncommon than to see them 
appear as an accused party before a court of justice 2 . " 

" In Holland, as well as in England and Germany, the refugees 
exercised a powerful influence upon politics and war, literature 
and religion, industry and commerce 3 . " 

" Natural history, medicine, physics, and especially the methodi- 
cal sciences, so generally cultivated in France since the time of 
Pascal and Descartes, owed to them the strong impulse they received 
in Holland 4 . The commerce and manufactures of the Low 
Countries were indebted to the refugees for an immense increase. 
The manufacturers who settled in the United Provinces endowed 
their adopted country with several new manufactures, assisted in 
the re-establishment of those that were in a declining state, and 
communicated a vigorous impulse to the national trade 5 ." 

" The city of Amsterdam, previously entirely occupied by 
maritime commerce, received a fresh population, composed of 
manufacturers and skilful artisans. A host of embroiderers in 
silk and thread, designers of flowered stuffs and laces, makers of 



t. Weiss, pp. 306, 309. — 2 Baird, vol. I, De la Religion aux Etata-Unis, pp. 178, 179. — 
3. Wess, VOl. II, p. 130. — 4. Idem, p. 101. — 5. Idem, 130. 



201 



serge and drugget, spinners of gold and silver thread from Lyons, 
and linen-cloth-makers from Aix, in Provence, whom the Dutch 
magistrates had induced to emigrate by promising them large pro- 
fits, flocked to Amsterdam. A great number of articles that had 
previously been purchased in France were now made in Holland 
by the refugees; serges of various kinds, single and double taffeties 
of all colours, crapes of wool and silk, fans, caudebecs, embroideries 
in gold and silver, in thread and in silk, point-lace d la reine, of 
which a manufactory was founded in the Orphan-house, brocades, 
ribbons, plain and flowered gauzes, beaver hats. When the town 
received its last addition by the construction of the streets com- 
prised between the Jews' quarter and the rampart, from the Amstel 
to the Rapenburg quay, the new houses were occupied in great part 
by French artisans, and especially by hatters. ' All these manu- 
factures % wrote Scion to the magistrate of Amsterdam, 6 have 
been established in two years' time, and without expense ; whereas, 
with all their endeavours, your predecessors were never able to 
obtain them, and the greatest ministers of the Most Christian King 
spent several millions upon them. They fill the city more and 
more with inhabitants, increase its public revenues, strengthen its 
walls and its boulevards, multiply arts and manufactures, establish 
new fashions, circulate money, erect new edifices, make trade 
flourish, fortify the Protestant religion, bring an abundance of all 
things, and will soon attract buyers from every country — from 
Germany, the kingdoms of the North, Spain, the Baltic Sea, the 
West Indies and American islands, and even from England. They 
contribute, in short, to render Amsterdam one of the most famous 
towns in the world.' 

" The manufactories established by the refugees increased the 
prosperity of Amsterdam with a rapidity that astonished Europe. 
This may be judged of by the report addressed in 1686 to the Elec- 
tor of Brandenburg, by his ambassador in Holland . The prodigious 
success of the French manufactures, that of lustrings — so long 
deemed impossible to be made elsewhere than at Tours and Lyons 
— the fall in the price of silken stuffs, which had formerly fetched 
fifty sous, and had fallen to thirty-six; that of beaver hats, which 
had cost ten crowns, and now cost but six, — such were the bene- 
fits this city owed to its generous hospitality, and which Frederick 
William's envoy reported to his master. 

" But nowhere did French industry flourish more than atLeyden 
and Haarlem. The manufactures established there did not attain 
their highest point of perfection until after the arrival of the Pro- 



202 



testants of France. From that date forward, they produced the 
finest cloth, the best camlets, and the most esteemed serges in Hol- 
land. They acquired a European reputation, and the high wages 
tempted even the Catholic soldiers of Louis XIV/s armies, who de- 
serted and went to Leyden in the capacity of workmen. 

ie Haarlem, which had likewise received amongst its citizens a 
large number of artisans from Flanders, also owed the increase and 
improvement of its manufactures to the French refugees, to whom 
the beauty of its situation and the salubrity of its climate proved 
particularly attractive . Th ey introduced the manufacture of plush, 
particularly of flowered plush, known in the trade by the name of 
caff as. The prodigious extent of Dutch trade in all parts of the 
world nevertheless gave a reputation to its plushes, flowered silk- 
stuffs, and stuffs of mingled silk and wool, which insured them 
everywhere a sale. These products of refugee industry acquired 
so great a reputation, that instances were known of particular sorts 
of velvets being manufactured at Milan, sent to Holland, then sent 
back to Milan, and sold there as Dutch velvet. 

(( Five hundred workmen, chiefly French, had helped a Dutch- 
man, James Van Mollen, to create in Utrecht a magnificent esta- 
blishment of watered silks. This town soon had also important 
manufactories of velvet. Founded, or early taken in hand, by re- 
fugees, their products had a solidity and lustre which those of Am- 
sterdam did not attain to. The French manufacturers, and especially 
those of Amiens, who endeavoured to imitate them, were soon 
unable to dispose of theirs, excepting under the name of Utrecht 
velvets. In fine, the ancient cloth-manufactories of that town, 
chiefly those of black cloth, were brought to great perfection by the 
refugees. Most of them passed into their hands, and were indebted 
to them for a long period of prosperity. « 

' c Thus did almost all the Dutch towns receive from the refugees 
an increase of wealth, owing to the manufactures these either brought 
into them or improved. Not only did they create new manufactures, 
and elevate those they found already established ; they did still more. 
By their intelligent toil they greatly improved the mechanical arts, 
the humblest trades. They taught the Dutch better processes than 
they had previously employed for refining sugar, salt, sulphur, rosin, 
for bleaching wax, making soap, etc., etc. Thus, by the high finish 
of their work, the refugee manufacturers and artisans acquired a 
reputation that kept in the country considerable sums by which 
France, and especially Paris, had formerly profited ; they won public 
esteem for manual aptitudes previously despised; and thus raised 



203 



the condition of the middle classes, which gained both in prosperity 
and in respect l . " 

" The activity of the refugees, who had to begin the world again, 
excited the liveliest emulation on the part of the Swiss, and. led 
to the most surprising and happiest results. Agriculture, in the 
first place, was indebted for great progress to the intelligence of 
those peasants of Languedoc and Dauphine who had quitted their 
cottages to seek religious liberty on a foreign soil. The daily food 
of the inhabitants was coarse and monotonous. The refugees com- 
pletely transformed the fields allotted to them. They formed model- 
gardens, which the Vaudois soon imitated. The guardians of the 
charity schools took advantage of the opportunity, and apprenticed 
several lads to these skilful agriculturists. 

" In the course of a few years the refugees assisted . greatly in 
the development of manufactures and trade in almost all the towns 
where they settled. Not only did the refugees introduce new ma- 
nufactures, which enhanced the prosperity of Lausanne, but they 
were the first to open shops, and so to substitute regular trade for 
the occasional traffic to which that province had previously been 
restricted \ M 

u If French Switzerland was indebted to the refugees for supe- 
rior polish, more elegant manners, and the inestimable benefit of 
a first assertion of the principle of religious liberty, it had no less 
to congratulate itself on their happy influence upon arts, sciences, 
and literature 3 . " 

u Thus, as regarded religion, literature, and politics, as well as 
agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the refugees exercised a 
favourable influence on the destinies of Protestant Switzerland, and 
even reacted, to a certain extent, on those of their former country, 
The salutary action of those distinguished men and their descendants 
continued during the whole of the eighteenth century, and has not 
ceased even in our own day. The progress of agriculture in the 
Pays de Vaud is in great part their work. The flourishing state of 
the country around Lausanne sufficiently proves the superiority of 
the modes of cultivation they introduced into that country, already 
so favoured by nature. The manufactures they took with them 
became for French Switzerland, and for the canton of Berne, 
a source of wealth which has never since run dry. The fine 
silk -manufactures with which they endowed their new coun- 
try have never ceased to improve in their hands, and to afford 



l. Weiss, p. 439. 448. — 2, idem, pp, 503, 504, — 3, Mem, p. 524, 



204 



employment to a vast multitude of native as well as French 
workmen. " 

" The refugees powerfully contributed to the progress of agricul- 
ture in the Danish monarchy. Some settled in Iceland, and there 
introduced the cultivation of hemp and flax. The others, fixed in 
the Danish peninsula, in the islands of the Baltic, and in Holstein, 
introduced the superior processes of French agriculture, and origi- 
nated several new objects of cultivation. King Frederic IV succeed- 
ed, by great promises, in establishing a colony of those skilful cul- 
tivators at Fredericia. This little colony did not disappoint the ex- 
pectations of its royal founder. In spite of obstacles, it never ceased 
to prosper and multiply, so much so, that at the end of the eigh- 
teenth century it formed a society of more than a hundred families, 
composed of five hundred or six hundred persons, who commanded 
public esteem by their industry and activity. To them the town 
of Fredericia owed the flourishing condition it soon attained. As 
early as the middle of the eighteenth century, its prosperity was 
unmistakable. It sufficed to compare the magnificent spectacle 
presented by its highly cultivated plains with the fields surrounding 
other Danish towns, which also owed their subsistence to agriculture. 
The difference was striking. To the refugees belonged the glory of 
having brought about this happy change; for, before their arrival, 
no part of the kingdom presented so unprosperous an appearance 1 /' 

" The French refugees in Denmark set an example, during the 
whole of the eighteenth century, and up to our own times, of the 
most rigid propriety of manners, of the most irreproachable mora- 
lity, of the most touching charity. All the emigrants were remark- 
able for their love of labour and their frugal manner of life. No- 
thing less than these habits of order and this rigorous economy 
would have enabled them to live at first, and afterwards gradually 
to rise to that degree of ease and comfort which rewarded their 
exertions. We must add that the colony of Fredericia has ever 
done its utmost to keep its young men at home. They lived under 
the eye of their families, remote from all example of corruption ; and 
their simple and austere habits assured the fecundity of marriages, 
in contracting which inclination was far more considered than inte- 
rest. The young girls, on their part, were stimulated to strict virtue 
by the hope of speedy establishment, and rarely departed from the 
right path, knowing that by misconduct they would forfeit all 
chance of marriage in the colony. Exempt from that licentiousness 



1. Weiss, pp. 544, 567. 



2o:; 



which vitiates both mind and body *— exempt from the luxury which 
creates new wants, and often prevents a man from thinking of 
choosing a wife — the colonists married young, and thus insured 
themselves a healthy and numerous posterity. Their undeviating 
confidence in Divine Providence made them consider large families 
a source of riches. Sure of their subsistence, free from all uneasi- 
ness about the future, the more arms they had to help them the 
more works they undertook — works which contributed to their 
wellbeing, and enabled them to support in society a rank propor- 
tionate to their modest desires *. " 

c ' In conclusion, let us follow the Protestant refugees as far as the 
very extremity of Africa; there, again, we shall see them prosper, 
as far as external circumstances allow them to do. Towards the end 
of the seventeenth century, there were about three thousand French 
refugees established at twelve leagues to the north of the Gape, in a 
fertile valley, which bears, to the present day, the name of French 
Valley. The members of the French tribe of Charron have always 
had as chief an old man chosen amongst the elders of the commu- 
nity, and without consulting whom no important enterprise is un- 
dertaken. This patriarchal government, so conformable to the de- 
mocratic ideas of the first Calvinists, has been favourable to industry. 
It has not been less useful to the maintenance of pure morality, 
simple habits, faith, and piety, which have remained uncontaminat- 
ed amongst the descendants of those expatriated families. There 
is a fourth village, the most considerable of all, that of La Pcrle, 
whose inhabitants, exclusively devoted to agriculture, are the richest 
in that old Dutch colony, now belonging to the English. 

" This population has not forgotten the rigid principles and fervid 
piety of their ancestors. The traveller who crosses their hospitable 
threshold invariably finds upon the table one of those great folio 
Bibles which the French Protestants were wont to hand down from 
father to son, as a sacred patrimony and inestimable treasure. The 
date of birth and the names of all the members of the family are 
invariably inscribed in it. Sometimes, too, one finds pious books 
in their houses, such as the Psalms put into verse by Clement Marot. 
An affecting custom has been preserved amongst these simple and 
austere men. Night and morning the members of each family as- 
semble for prayer. There are no formalities or pompous ceremonies; 
they content themselves with praying with all their hearts, and with 
reading the Bible. Every Sunday, at sunrise, the farmers set out 



1. Weiss, pp. 576, 577. 



206 

in their rustic vehicles, covered with hides or with coarse cloth, to 
attend divine service, and at night they return peaceably to their 
homes. Gambling is unknown amongst them, and the refined cor- 
ruption of European civilisation has not reached them . The useful 
arts and practical instruction are all they care for and cultivate. 
They seek to diffuse them amongst their former slaves, whom they 
have always treated with kindness, and they willingly devote much 
time and pains to the propagation of the gospel amongst the idola- 
trous races that surround them l . " 

We may sum up in the following words the various particulars in- 
troduced above : " The fugitives, dispersed over the whole world, 
unconsciously became the agents of God's mysterious w r ill. They 
were destined, especially in America, to temper Puritan fanati- 
cism, to foster the germ and to favour the triumph of that spirit of 
independence, regulated by law, of which the United States to-day 
present to us the magnificent example ; in Europe, to develope for 
Prussia, to increase for Holland and England, the elements of power 
and prosperity contained in those three countries, whose present 
greatness is, in some respects, and to a certain extent, their work. 
Have they not contributed, in the most critical circumstances, to 
defend them by arms, and to help them to repel foreign invasion ? 
Have they not aided, in some degree, to maintain them in the poli- 
tical path that has so long preserved them from despotism, that 
preserves them from the dangers of anarchy, and that, by prevent- 
ing them from being disturbed by revolutions, which succeed each 
other at regular intervals, assures them the inestimable benefit of 
institutions at once stable and liberal ? Have they not enriched 
them by improving their manufactures, by the introduction of new 
ones, by stimulating their commercial activity, by teaching them 
the superior processes of French agriculture ? Have they not, by 
propagating the language and literature of France, raised the stan- 
dard of intellectual cultivation, and consequently, of public mora- 
lity ? Have they not, by their own writings, spread the love of 
literature, of science, and of art ? Finally, have they not set the 
example of urbanity in social relations, of politeness in language, 
of austerity in morals, of the most inexhaustible charity towards 
the suffering and the indigent ? - " 

" It was admirable to observe that this people, excluded for more 
than a century from all employments, impeded in all professions, 
hunted like wolves in the forests and mountains, without schools, 



i. Weiss, pp. 458, 460. — 2. Idem, p. 586, 



207 

without any family recognised by law, without any certain inheri- 
tance,, had lost nothing of its ancient energy. By its enlighten- 
ment, its morality, its civic virtues, it was worthy of the great 
reparation reserved for it by the Revolution V 

We now state our question once more : Persecution, it is said, 
has scattered away the Irish Catholics as beggars and sufferers; how 
is it that the identical cause has, on the contrary, sent the Protestant 
refugees to prosper in the same regions side by side with the outcast 
Irish ? If we may quote an example we have already adduced, why 
do the descendants of the Huguenots constitute the aristocracy of 
Whitechapel, whilst their Celtic neighbours are its disgrace ? Why 
are the children of the French reformers landlords, merchants, and 
bankers in Dublin, whilst the Irish are workmen and beggars in 
London ? The only cause for this difference is that the truth was 
on one side, and error on the other. Here, God ; there, the Pope : 
unless some persons would venture to say that there is no God, and 
that it does not signify whether we follow truth, or are led astray 
by error. 

But only half of our argument is as yet proved. Suppose such 
an objection as this : if the refugees prospered out of France, it is 
because they were beyond the reach of persecution. Let us see, 
then, what became of the Huguenots who remained exposed to its 
fury. What is now the condition of the French Protestants in 
France ? The answer to this question shall bear upon the three 
points which constitute all our comparisons : material prosperity, 
intellectual culture, morality. 

Material Prosperity. — Persecuted during centuries, deprived 
of their properly, the French Protestants might be expected to be, as 
far as wealth goes, not on a level with the rest of the nation, but 
far below, at the present day. Is this the case ? If we wished to 
appeal merely to public opinion, w T e are certainly entitled to say 
that the reader's conscience has already answered, and thus we 
should have done with this part of our subject ; but our desire is to 
affirm nothing, not even what is self-evident, without supporting 
our assertions by documents. Those we have procured for this 
special purpose are authentic, and of the highest value. As the 
source from which they are drawn is not accessible to the public, 
we must beg to explain how we came to discover it. The fortune 
of the citizens in France can be estimated neither according to 
their landed property, nor the profit they derive from trade ; for 



1. Weiss j p. 592. 



208 



it often consists of the interests of a funded capital, which it is im- 
possible to state. Amongst tradesmen themselves, we conld not 
adopt as a sure basis the account of licences granted, for they do not 
all take one. The safest criterion is the personal tax, as being 
alone in the same ratio as the individual's fortune; for generally 
speaking, each one has a style of living corresponding to his means; 
and, even if this fact were not always correct, we might here sup- 
pose it to he so because we adopt as a uniform weight both for the 
Catholics and the Protestants. 

In order to make our comparison, it would, therefore, be neces- 
sary to know the personal tax of all the Protestants in France ; but 
this is a fact which the government itself could not ascertain ; for, 
up to the present time, religion has never been taken notice of in 
the census-tables, and the particulars of the taxation, besides, 
will never be published. Then, how voluminous the undertaking, 
supposing it was accomplished ! But, if impossible for the whole 
of France, a research such as this is practicable within the limits of 
one department. We have done it ourselves for the department 
of the Seiue from documents which were procured in the following 
manner. In 1852, the Reformed Church of Paris, having to reap- 
point its consistory, had a list drawn out of all its parishioners who 
were voters. This list, lithographed, is in our possession, for, 
athough not extensively circulated, several copies of it were struck 
off. We forwarded it to the Prefecture of the Seine, and ob- 
tained the statement of the personal tax paid by each person whose 
name and direction appear thereon. We then ascertained from 
the same authority the average of personal tax paid by all the inha- 
bitants of Paris : supplied with these documents, we added up to- 
gether the different items paid by tbe Protestants enumerated on 
the parish list ; we divided the total by the number of tax-payers, 
and we thus finally obtained a Protestant average, which we here 
place opposite the general one : 

Account of personal tax for the city of Paris : 

Average paid by all tbe inhabitants 33 fr. U cent. 

Average paid by tbe Protestants 87 fr. 01 cent. 

According to this basis, therefore, the fortune of the French 
Protestants is, at the present time, very nearly treble that of the 
Roman Catholics belonging to the same country! And, if the fact 
is taken into consideration that the general average is increased by 
the triple taxes which the Protestants forming one twentieth of 



209 



the nation, have to pay, it will be seen that the result we have just 
offered, as an approximating number, is really very correct. We 
repeat it, if we take for our standard the amount of personal tax 
paid by the department of the Seine, the French Protestants are 
three times as rich as their Catholic countrymen. But the above 
calculation being our own, authentic, irrefutable as it is, we wish 
to compare it with the results arrived at by other persons on so 
novel a subject. We can have, of course, no direct document to 
bring forward; but on the other hand our readers will understand 
that any piece of information supporting our discovery only in an 
indirect manner will be so much the more valuable as it has evi- 
dently not been put together for the purpose of making good our 
argument. 

This is the reason which induces us to publish the following 
facts : It is well known that the departments of the Gard and the 
Upper Rhine contain the greatest number of Protestants. Every 
body is aware, too, that the departments of Finistere and Morbihan 
not only are exclusively Roman Catholic, but that they are more 
completely than any other under the influence of the priests. Now, 
what place do those departments occupy on the list of patentees or 
license-holders ? 

In the Upper Rhine there ore. 

In the Gard 

In the Finistere 

In the Morbihan 

In the two essentially Protestant departments, the number of pa- 
tentees is consequently more than double what it is in the two 
exclusively Catholic ones, and our preceding calculation is thus 
confirmed, which stated the fortune of the Paris Protestants to be 
nearly three times that of their fellow-citizens. We shall now see 
the same fact proved by a third demonstration. The following 
facts are given to us by a late mayor of Nismes : — C( At the time 
of the census of 1846, the whole population of Nismes amounted 
to 50,000; viz., 35,000 Roman Catholics, and 15,000 Protestants : 
816 voters paid more than 200 francs of taxes, and 389 amongst 
them were Protestants. " This is nearly one-half instead of one- 
third, which would be the proportional numbers. " Out of the 
300 most heavily taxed patentees, 202 were Protestants; " that is 
to say, double the proportional number. 



38 patentees for every 1,000 inhabitants. 
38 — — 

17 — — 

18 i — — 



1. Schnitzler, vol. m, pp. 171, 172. 
T. II. 



210 



This fact is acknowledged, too, by one of the writers whose 
views are most hostile to Protestantism. M. Rubichon confesses 
c( that a great number of French Protestants are at the head of our 
manufactures and of our commerce • they are, therefore, richer 
than the same number of French Roman Catholics 1 . ** 

No one who has perused the articles published by the Revue des 
Deux Mondes on the subject of Protestant Missions will accuse that 
periodical of partiality for the Protestants; well, in its number for 
October 15, -1853, we find the following paragraph relating to the 
point under discussion : — 

" The development of education varies a little at Mazamet, accord- 
ing to the different religions. Out of 10,000 inhabitants, about 
4,000 belong to the Reformed creed. All the master manufacturers, 
except one, are Protestants, whilst the majority of the workmen are 
Catholics. There is less instruction amongst these than in the in- 
dustrious Protestant families. The latter, being in better circum- 
stances than the former, have been enabled to devote more care to 
education 2 . " 

The same might be said of Nismes, Marseilles, Lyons, and Bor- 
deaux; but as we cannot enter into details such as the above for all 
the cities in France, we shall limit ourselves to the significant do- 
cuments we have given respecting Paris : documents open to inspec- 
tion to any one who may feel inclined to verify our statements. 

Our last quotation connects the subject of intellectual culture 
with that of material prosperity; let us, then, go on to the second 
point we have to examine : 

Intellectual Culture. — Here our sources of information are 
not less precise; they will have, moreover, the advantage of render- 
ing the truth in some manner visible and tangible. 

Although scattered over the length and breadth of France, the 
Protestants may be subdivided into two distinct and pretty consi- 
derable groups. Those belonging to the Lutheran Church, in 
Alsace; those professing the Reformed faith, in the Gard, and the 
neighbouring departments, the Drome, the Ardeche, and the He- 
rault. Alsace is not altogether Protestant, no doubt, but there the 
Protestants are most numerous, and are thus more likely to modify 
educational statistics. We say the same of Languedoc, Impos- 

i. L'aclion du Clergi dans les Socielcs Modernes, by KubicllOfl, — 2. It Would be eiTOlieOUS tO 

reckon up for France the children attending Protestant schools, because we must take into 
consideration the pupils of mixed schools. This is, however, what the Protestant Almanack lias 
done, so that the editor's result, in 1844, for the whole kingdom is quite contrary to the one 
he obtained in 1842 for the department of the Gard. Such statements may serve as a text fo* 
declamatory exhortations, but they can give no support -to the cause of truth. 



sible, as we find it, lo make a correct division in both these pro- 
vinces, if we consider them as Protestants, it w r ill be noticed that 
the error is quite to the advantage of Catholicism. For, if the 
exclusively Catholic departments were more enlightened than the 
mixed ones, we might presume that the superiority proceeds from 
the Popish faith; but, should the reverse be the case, the superiority 
of the mixed departments must come from the Protestant element 
they contain; so that, in considering them as exclusively Protest- 
ants, our want of correctness is a real profit for the Catholic cause. 

According to Mr. Schnitzler, the six departments which supply 
the primary schools 1 with the greatest number of pupils are the 
Meurlhe, Upper Rhine, Lower Rhine, Haute-Saone, Yosges, and 
the Moselle. The very six departments which comprise the ma- 
jority of the Alsace Lutheran V 

The same author gives as the six departments numbering the 
smallest amount of pupils : the Allier, Indre-et-Loire, Upper 
Vienne 2 , Morbihan, Correze, and the C6tes-du-Nord. That is to 
say, those containing the most exclusively Catholic populations, and 
the most zealous Catholics ! 

But at what distance are both extremes from each other ? 

On the Protestant side we find 1 pupil for every 6 inhabitants. 
On the Catholic side we find 1 — 23 3 _ 

The contrast can be rendered visible to the reader by a reference 
to Baron Charles D train's figurative map of primary instruction in 
France. On this map each department is shaded with darker 
and lighter tints, according to the greater or smaller degree of 
ignorance; a number shews, besides, how many persons must be 
reckoned for one who knows how to read ; so that the higher the 
number, the deeper the ignorance. What we purpose doing now 
will be to copy exactly from Baron Du pin's chart the departments 
we have just been alluding to. The reader must compare for 
himself. Our reproductions are facsimiles. We have even left 
the verso of each page quite clear, in order to avoid increasing the 
darkness of the shading. 

1. Ecoles primaires, corresponding to our national schools in England. — 2. The Proteslani 
churi'hes and schools opened in this department are of more recent date than Schnitzler's 
statistics. — 3. Schnitzler, vol. iij pp. 345, 346. The above numbers differ from those of 
M. Dupin, inasmuch as the latter concern only male pupils; besides, the dates do not cor- 
respond. 



FAC-SLMILE TAKEN FROM M. DUPIPTS MAP- 
{Departments essentially Roman Catholic.) 



213 



F AC-SIMILE TAKEN FROM M. DUPIN S MAP. 

{Departments including the great agglomeration of the Protestant Lutheran 

Churches.) 



214 



After having thus considered the Lutheran Church, let us now 
examine the slate of the case in the Reformed community. By a 
reference to M. Dnpin's map, we shall find, towards the centre, a 
frightfully dark spot. This includes the departments of the Gantal, 
Puy-de-D6me, Gorreze, and the Haute-Loire. Now, with the 
exception of three little village congregations, these departments 
are entirely Roman Catholic. 

Rut, on the other hand, if we look round that gloomy centre, we 
observe that it is girt as with a zone of light, comprising the de- 
partments in which is gathered the densest cluster of Reformed 
churches. Now, therefore, we meet again the contrast we have 
already found betwen the cost and the west, between Alsace and 
Britanny. 



217 

F AC-SIMILE TAKEN FROM M. DUPIN's MAP. 

(Departments including the great agglomeration of. the Protestant 
Churches.) 



219 



Lastly, M. Dupm's map exhibits a third contrast in the results 
given by two departments almost adjoining each other, the 
Sf^f f d * he ^i-e-et-Loire: the former has 1 pupil in 
2S inhabits; the latter, 1 in 229. Now, the Deux-Sevres 
contain 21 large Protestant churches, and the Indre-et-Loire not 




Thus, a uniform conclusion is arrived at, after a threefold expe- 
riment made, both upon groups of departments and upon de- 
partments taken singly. 

The result supplied through our own observations is corroborated 
in the following statement, the full value of which will now be 
better understood by the reader : 

c< Departments presenting the maximum of ignorance . 

Finistere (Rom. Cath.), 709 in 1,000; C6tes-du-Nord (Cath.) 702. 
Departments presenting the minimum of ignorance. 

Lower-Rhine fProt.), 61 in 1,000; Doubs (Prot.), 109; Upper 
Rhine (Prot.), 139 

This affirmation, besides, is not made by ourselves, but by a 
Roman Catholic professor. M. Lorain, a man whose experience 
no one will question, speaks as follows in his Sketch of the State of 
Primary Instruction in France drawn up from Authentic Documents 2 . 
" A fact which should stimulate the zeal of the other Christian de- 
nominations is, that those who profess the Reformed religion are 
infimt^ly beyond us in point of primary instruction. And I am 
not alluding here to the towns where it might be supposed that the 
presence of influential Protestants tells powerfully upon the happi- 
ness of the children, and th i management of the schools; no, even 
in the most distant, the most obscure, the loneliest villages, the 
influence of the austere forms of Protestantism is felt in the reli- 
gious care with which children are sent to the school; and more 
than once, when, in glancing over the map of a department, I saw 
all those school-less districts composing the great desert of primary 
instruction, the depths of some unknown valley exhibited to me a 
real oasis 3 . " 

" The Catholics and Protestants (of the Charente) have forgotten 
the dissensions of their forefathers. The Protestants have more 
piety than the Roman Catholics. 

" All things, besides, being equal , I have ascertained that in the 
department of the Drome civilisation and instruction are less ad- 
vanced amongst the Roman Catholic than amongst the Protestant 
populations. 

" The Protestant religion prevails in the arrondissement of 
Florae (Lozere). There the civilisation is greater than at Mende 
(Roman Catholic); all or nearly all the districts (communes) are 
provided with teachers. 

" The best schools (in the Lower- Rhine) belong to the Protest- 



1. Schnilzlcr, vol. II, p. 368. — 2. Tableau de Vltistruction ■primairc, cn France, d'apres les 
doewmrnf* atilhcnUques. — 3. Loiilill, pp. 54, 55. 



ants. At Strasburg, in the canton of Oberhausenbergen, which 
I have visited, almost all the best schools are Protestants. This 
superiority of the Protestant over the Roman Catholic schools arises 
chiefly, as I have already stated in another report, from the fact that 
Protestant children frequent the school up to the age of fourteen, 
when they are admitted for the first time to the Lord's table; whilst 
the Roman Catholics discontinue their attendance as early as the age 
of twelve, when they generally make their first communion. " 

" In conclusion, in the arrondissement of Niort (Deux-Sevres), 
canton of Saint-Maixent, the fifteen districts (communes) supply a 
sum total of 28 schools, mostly Protestant. This flourishing state 
of things is owing to the influence of the views of progress gene- 
rally adopted by Protestant Christians, and warmly encouraged by 
their pastors 1 . " 

" The superiority of the Protestant schools may be traced to se- 
veral causes : 1. Protestant children, for the most part, frequent 
the school all the year round, whilst during the summer months the 
Roman Catholic schools are nearly deserted; 2. Protestant children 
discontinue their attendance only when they are fourteen years old,, 
whilst the Roman Catholics cease coming as soon as they have 
made their first communion ; that is to say, at the age of twelve or 
thirteen; 3. Protestant ministers are generally more zealous than 
the Catholic cures in helping, encouraging, and superintending the 
teachers 2 . " 

The same author explains to us, not only why Protestant schools 
are so superior, but also why the level of the Roman Catholic 
schools is so very low. The motive of this last fact he finds in the 
conduct of the Roman clergy, which is precisely the reverse of that 
he has had to notice in the Protestant pastors. The priests are 
opposed to instruction, at least wheiV instruction is not under their 
own management. 

The same opposition will, of course, be found amongst their 
inferior agents the Brethren of the Christian Doctrine. M. Lorain 
does his best to deal gently with the Brethren and the clergy, 
whom he would fain bring over to the cause of liberal educa- 
tion; and yet, in spite of his gentleness, he cannot help speaking 
out his inmost conviction. A few extracts will reveal it to the 
reader : " We are not sufficiently acquainted," says he, with the 
fundamental constitution of that society (the Rrethren of the Chris- 
tian Doctrine) with the power which governs them, with the en- 



1, Lorain, pp. 264, 265. — 2. idem, p. 264. 



gagements which bind them to the ecclesiastical, nay, perhaps, to 
the papal, authority, to supply in this respect the particulars our 
readers might naturally expect ; we think, moreover, that the se- 
cret of this connexion has been kept enough to allow us no- 
thing but conjectures. In the eye of many people, the principles 
and the direction which regulate this society will for a long time 
bear the reproach of being surrounded by mystery *. " 

<c Despite the conservative spirit which actuates them, the Bre- 
thren have made up their mind to introduce into their method 
important modifications; competition has warmed them, and they 
have understood their own interest -. " 

" In the arrondissement of Angers (Maine-et-Loire) the Bre- 
thren have declined the books sent by the University, and they 
have persisted, up to the present day, in not making known to 
the Academie 3 the numerous mutations occurring amongst them ; 
hence the material impossibility of ascertaining what is the staff of 
teachers belonging to those schools \ ,} 

As might have been expected, the female teachers under the au- 
thority of the priests are still more below the intellectual level of 
their profession. We give respecting them the opinion of several 
inspectors, quoted by M. Lorain: " Each village (in the Upper 
Loire) has its 'beate;' the priests, those enemies of intellectual 
freedom, exercise there a most fatal influence. The state of educa- 
tion is deplorable. Almost everywhere I have found elementary 
teaching intrusted to a girl professing strict views of devotion (une 
f ile devote), and who goes in each village by the name of ' beetle. ' 
Those girls impart such erroneous principles of reading (the only 
thing they teach), that, for the pupils coming afterwards to the 
town schools, their lessons are rather a hindrance than a help. 

" In each small village or hamlet are to be found female teach- 
ers, called c beates, ' or * Boubiaques. ' These pious but igno- 
rant girls teach embroidery, reading, and sometimes writing. 
They live upon little, cost nothing, and impart to both boys and 
girls the first elements of religion. This is sufficient for the 
priests, and, consequently, for the parents; who, as far as educa- 
tion goes, are entirely ruled by clerical influence 3 . " 

We must remark, too, that neither the ignorance of the teachers 
nor that of their pupils should be ascribed to their own idleness; 
the whole blame rests with the fixed determination of the clergy. 
The facts we have given arise, not from neglect, but from syste- 

1. Lorain* pp. 77 and 85. — 2. Idem, p. 82. — 3» The local board of educations — 4. Lorain, 
p. 322. — 5. Idem, pp. 326, :<27. 



22i 



matic opposition. "The government/' says M. Lorain, 4 -'should 
carefully watch the dark and continual intrigues which the majo- 
rity of the cures are opposing to all improvement in education, the 
monopoly of which it is their constant object to secure. " 

" Instead of furthering the views of government (in the Mayenne), 
for the amelioration and diffusion of elementary instruction, the 
cures do all they can, and avail themselves of all their influence, 
for the purpose of preventing the municipal councils from voting 
the necessary funds towards the establishment of a district school 
(rente communalc). They have exclusively the upper hand in 
rural parts 1 . " " To sum up our statements, the Roman Catholic 
schools are inferior to the Protestant ones, both as to number and 
to quality; a double difference, arising," says M. Lorain, " from 
the fact that the Protestant pastors are more zealous than the 
Roman Catholic cures in encouraging the teachers. " 

But the inferiority we have described does not stop with the pu- 
pils of elementary schools; it reaches Ihose belonging to training 
establishments (ecoles normal e*) 3 and even the students of the theo- 
logical seminaries. Our readers may judge. As it is the Roman 
Catholic influence we Avish to ascertain in the education question, 
we must distinguish between the lay training-schools which exist 
in various parts of France, and the clerical training-schools which 
do not exist, For the new law, answering admirably to all the 
expectations of the clergy, exempts from all attendance at a train- 
ing-school, nay, from all examination, such pupils as have merely 
resided for five years with a teacher as probationers. 

Now, see how exactly this law meets the wants of the Brethren of 
the Christian Doctrine. According to their statutes, they are obliged 
to go two together, so that the bishops can, without the least 
expanse, place with every real teacher a mere probationer knowing 
always sufficiently to keep the class in order, and who in course of 
time is always sure of getting a teacher's diploma. The law tits 
itself so well to the views of the priests, that it seems as if it had 
been drawn up on purpose to please them. Under its sanction, 
therefore, we must expect to see the lay training-schools vanish 
away for ever; the best pupils of these last-named establishments 
cannot stand against so powerful a competition; then, when the 
last has disappeared, we shall see exclusively throughout the 
whole extent of France Roman Catholic schools under the direct 



1. Lorain, p. 's02. 



influence of the clergy, and ruled by masters who have not sludied, 
but raided with the " Brethren. " 

But let us pass on to the lay teachers. Every examination at the 
Sorbonne is attended by Catholic and Protestant candidates; at 
every examination, the result is the same as the one we have just 
stated. In November, 1853, for instance, there were 49 Roman 
Catholic and 6 Protestant candidates ; two only out of the former 
obtained a diploma, whilst, out of the latter, four received theirs — 
the superiority being as 1 to 2. 

Teachers, we see, are what we might have expected from their 
position as students. We must now ascertain whether the spiri- 
tual guides of the community are at all better. And, first, what 
is the condition of theological faculies? " Six Roman Catholic 
divinity faculies, " says M. Schnitzler, " are open at Paris, Bor- 
deaux, Aix, Lyons, Toulouse, and Rouen ; two belonging to the Pro- 
testants exist at Strasbourg and at Montauban. " The Roman Ca- 
tholic faculies stand merely pro (ormd; they are not useful 
realities, nor are they valued as they should be. In an excellent 
report on the state of public instruction, presented in 1836 to the 
Chamber of Deputies, one of the University councillors alludes to 
" the deplorable condition of these faculies, and the complete soli- 
tude to which they are reduced. " u Science, " says M. Dubois \ 
(i in all its power, its strength, its fulness, is the only thing that 
has in it the elements of life; religion, as well as all other human 
institutions, is subject to this law. Now, really, when we see to 
what a low 7 ebb theological teaching has fallen in France during the 
last eighty years, on the subject of doctrines, discipline, or eccle- 
siastical history, we are struck at once both with terror and with 
shame ; limiting ourselves merely to secular considerations, the 
comparison of our schools with those abroad is for us a matter of 
confusion. The ideas, the systems, the institutions, which since 
the last century form the basis of every history, of every civilisa- 
tion, are taught nowhere amongst us according to their importance, 
and to the part they are playing in the history of this world 2 . " 
" We need hardly hesitate to affirm that, in the theological 
faculies, the only auditors are those who attend the lectures of Pro- 
testant professors. And yet, in the higher seminaires, there are 
generally more than 7,000 pupils. In 1837, the number was as 
much as 7,888 s ." 

The word seminaire is applied exclusively in France to Roman 



1. Dubois, p. 70. — 2. Schnitzler, VOl. It, p. 318. — 3. Idem, p, 319. 

T. II. 15 



2"2G 

Catholic theological schools. It may be objected that teminaire 
answers the purpose of theological faculles. No doubt; but this 
does not clear the difficulty. Why should the future conductors of 
the Church be trained in schools where no one, not even the State, 
can control the teaching imparted to them ? We are now touching 
upon a delicate question; one which we can answer only in 
Latin. This answer is before us, notwithstanding the following 
caution with which the volume opens : 

ee IMPORTANT CAUTION. 

t< Every application for this work must be accompanied by an 
authorisation from either the superior of the high seminaire, be- 
longing to the diocese, or a vicar-general. Without this indispen- 
sable formality, no copy can be sold . " 

Modesty forbids us quoting from the volume in question, even 
in Latin; so we shall just extract a few headings to be found, in the 
table of contents : 

££ Be fornicatione. 

i£ Demeretricio. 

£( De incestu. 

" Be clericis ad turpia sollicitantibus. 
(£ Be pollutions 

££ An liceat gaudere de pollutione inculpabiiiter contingenti. 

(£ Be sodomia. 

" Be bestialitate 1 . » 

The whole book treats of the like topics. Our readers will thank 
us for not analysing it, even though it would supply us with a thou- 
sand strong arguments against our opponents ! 

The end of the work, however, throws an indirect light upon 
a system of teaching which we shall reveal in order that every one 
may know why some persons had rather whisper their doctrines 
behind the walls of a seminaire, than explain them publicly in the 
Sorbonne. For instance, after having said that it is not allowable 
to open the corpse of a dead woman for the purpose of baptising the 
foetus, against the parent's wish, how could a lecture r dare, in the 
presence of medical students, to acid : ££ If, however, the persons 
who are appointed to watch over the dead woman, or to bury her, 
could be persuaded to open the body secretly, and attempt to save 
the child, these means might be tried, but it would require the 



1; Dissertatio in sextim Deealogi prmeeptum, etc., owcfore, J.-B. Bouvier. Paris, 1849- 



greatest precaution *. " In the presence of law-students, how could 
anyone dare to say that "government has persecuted and condemn- 
ed to a fine individuals who had performed that operation (the 
cesarian) with the greatest precaution, under the pretence that they 
had practised surgery illegally ! " And, will it be credited, that, 
after having allowed the illegality of an operation which a surgeon 
has not performed, the author proceeds to teach persons not belong- 
ing to the medical profession how they should perform it themselves ! 
" Surgeons have instruments, " says he, " and other persons who 
have none must employ the means they may find within their 
reach ! 2 " How could any one dare to say, before the old pupils of 
MM. Michel et and Quinet ( authors of The Jesuits, and of Priests, 
Women, and Families) that when a girl big with child is in danger, 
the only authorisation needed for the autopsy of her body, imme- 
diately after death, is a letter neither written, nor even signed, but 
merely given by her ! 3 " 

Ah ! we can well understand why such teaching is buried in the 
depths of the seminaircs! We can well understand that such im- 
purity, that illegality so criminal, should produce amongst those 
who sanction it a feeling of shame ! 

But we are now led to the moral question ; the third and last 
point we have to examine : 

Morality. — In our review of countries, whether Roman Catho- 
lic or Protestant, our object is neither to exalt the one, or abuse the 
other; our sole intention is to show what doctrines are worth, by 
describing the men who have been trained under their influence. 
This was an easy task when we had to deal with material prospe- 
rity, which can be handled, or with intellectual culture, which is 
easily perceptible , as the motives of action are the only tests of mo- 
rality : our work now is more difficult. The dread of opinion may, 
as well as the voice of conscience, suggest outward propriety of 
behaviour. To this difference we shall first direct our attention. 

Catholicism is not in France now-a-clays what it was in times 
gone by; what it is still in countries where it enjoys unlimited 
sway. The Reformation has reformed, amongst us, even the Ro- 
man Catholic church; as far, Ave mean, as externals are concerned. 
The morals of the clergy have benefited especially from this im- 
provement; and we quote the fact to show the respective merits of 
both doctrines... The one unwittingly gives a lesson ; the other, 
unwittingly likewise, is obliged to receive it. 

1. Dissertatio in seXtum Decalogi prmceptum, etc.} auctore, J.-B. Boiivier. Paris, 1849, p; 208i 
— 2. Idem, p. 209. — 3. Idem, p. 211; 



Perhaps, however, the moral amelioration of the Roman Catholics 
through Protestant influence is a mere hypothesis on our part ? 
We might be satisfied with appealing to public opinion. We pre- 
fer in this case, too, supporting our assertion by written docu- 
ments. 

Our first quotation is a letter from one of the ministers of 
Louis XIV, exhorting the Catholic clergy not to estrange the Protes- 
tants from the Holy Church by the sight of their customary world- 
liness and avarice : — 

(To My Lord the Archbishop of Paris.) Fonlaineblcau, Nov. 6, 1685. 

" Sir, — 

i: A complaint has been made to the King that the theatines, 
under the plea of devotion to the souls in purgatory, have a real 
opera performed in their church. Every one goes for the purpose 
of hearing the music ; the gate is guarded by two Suisse* ; sittings 
are let at ten sous each; all the changes introduced, all the means 
employed to increase devotion are made public by bills, as if it were 
the first performance of a new play. Whereupon his Majesty 
commands me to w r rite to you, in order to ascertaiu whether, there 
be any ground for this complaint, and to inform you that, consi- 
dering the present state of the Protestants with regard to their 
conversion, it would perhaps be better to avoid public exhibitions 
which are painful, as you yourself know r , and w 7 hich w T ould only 
increase the dislike Protestants have for our religion. " 

We now give another epistle, in which the coadjutor of Rouen 
complains of the scandal given to the Protestants by the debauche- 
ries of persons belonging to religious associations : — 

^To M. de Chateauneuf.) " Dec. 11, 16S5. 

" Sir,— 

"The coadjutor of Rouen informs me that one of the greatest 
obstacles he has met with in his attempt to convert the Protestants 
has been the scandal created by the religious associations belonging 
to that city; for those w T ho become presidents of such associations 
are obliged every year to spend large sums of money in festivities, 
which are only incentives to drunkenness, and which, nevertheless, 
they cannot dispense with if their object is to fill some municipal 
office. The King commands me to lay this fact before you, in order 
thai you may w rite to the intendant for his advice, and endeavour 



229 



to find some means of suppressing the aforesaid religious associa- 
tions. Li. S. K" 

The very influence of the Protestants, then, has improved the 
morality of the Roman Catholics, and especially amongst the priests. 
Let us now see, at least comparatively, what that morality is at the 
present day. 

Our readers will easily understand that we can only supply on 
this point incomplete statements. Roman Catholics and Protestants 
are so mixed up together in the population of France, that it is im- 
possible to ascertain their respective influence. An inquiry can be 
made only in the cases where both denominations are placed one 
near another; for instance, in statistical accounts, in hospitals, and 
prisons. A word on each of these points. 

M. de Guerry, well known by his works on the moral statistics of 
France, has pointed out in a few paragraphs two results which de- 
serve notice. He shows that the departments where the Roman 
clergy is most influential are also those : J, "where crimes against 
persons are most common; " 2, " where (with the exception of Bri- 
tanny, Alsace, Lorraine, and La Vendee), illegitimate children are 
most numerous; " 3, " where donations made to the poor by testa- 
tors occur most frequently. " Now, M. de Guerry tells us that " he 
has considered as indirectly bestowed upon schools and upon the 
poor gifts which are made to the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine, 
and to Sisters of Charity ! " And that we may know the share which 
falls to the lot of ecclesiastical establishments out of these legacies, 
said to be bestowed upon the poor, M. de Guerry adds that " these 
dispositions constitute nearly half the total number of donations 
and legacies." In conclusion, M. de Guerry proves by the calcula- 
tions contained in official reports, that during the years posterior to 
1820, " the number of legacies and gifts to the clergy has increased 
to nearly double ; whilst, in the same space of time, donations to 
the poor have only increased in the proportion of 45 per cent., that 
is to say, one-half less. " And yet M. de Guerry considers as given 
to the poor the bequests made to Sisters of Charity ! 

How instructive the few facts w r e nave just adduced ! We shall 
leave the reader to draw his own conclusions, and examine the 
details which the same author gives respecting the Protestants. 

M. de Guerry points out a circumstance which we must first no- 
tice, because it evidences an enlightened liberality : "it is amongst 
the Protestants that schools find most benefactors. " But M. de 



I. Bulletin of the Historical Society of French Protestantism, July and AllgllSt, 1833. 



230 



Guerry obtains another result, which he will explain himself. He 
states that Protestants give less to the poor than Roman Catholics. 
This must be, of course, in a statistical document, which describes 
as given to the poor the donations made to the Brethren of the 
Christian Doctrine, and to Sisters of Charity. Protestants never give 
to either pastors or teachers; they think it more prudent to bestow 
their alms upon churches and schools, and it is the consistory — a 
lay body — which receives and dispenses these charities. The 
result would have been quite different if the legacies made to the 
Brethren and to the Sisters of Charity had not been put down as be- 
longing to the poor, since "these bequests amount to nearly half 
the total number of donations and legacies. " 

But M. de Guerry himself explains this anomaly. He adds : 
" It is only fair to remark that if the Protestants give less to the 
poor than the Roman Catholics, it often happens that by giving to 
their fellow-believers, they do not forget our charitable establish- 
ments. " Thus, where M. de Guerry alludes to the gifts made by 
Protestants to the poor, he only means those they bestow on their 
fellow-believers; and if we were to add, besides, donations made 
to Catholic charitable institutions (an item which M. de Guerry 
takes no notice of in. his parallel), the proportion would still be 
reversed. 

Let us mention a last fact. From our foregoing remarks, it 
follows that Protestants give more to schools, whilst Roman Catholic 
liberality is more centered upon the clergy. Now, does the reader 
wish to know whose donations are dispensed with the least osten- 
tation? M. de Guerry makes the following remark: "Donors, 
whose names remain unknown, are five limes more numerous 
amongst those who give to the schools, than amongst those who 
dispose in behalf of the clergy. " 

The reader may judge for himself. We shall now make hospi- 
tals the subject of our inquiry : — 

Let us consider the city of Nismes, where three-tenths of the po- 
pulation are Protestants, and.where the two parties are, by excep- 
tion, so deeply separated that no confusion need be feared. 

We have before us statements, derived from official sources, both 
ecclesiastic and municipal, which we could produce, if needed. 
These documents supply us with the following tabular view of 
natural children, born in both communions during the space of 
five years : — 



231 



Years. Natural children. Catholic. Protestant. 



In 1849 146 of which 134 and 12 

1850 155 — 148 — 7 

1851 148 — 138 — 10 

1852 119 — 107 — 12 

1853 136 — 131 — 5 



704 658 46 

That is to say, one-fourteenth instead of one-third; — or, four 
times more immorality on the side of Rome. 

In this account we have taken no notice of exposed children, 
whose origin is unknown. But here the disproportion must be 
greater still, because these children being brought up in the hospital 
as Roman Catholics, Protestant mothers must feel more reluctant 
than others to send their children there. We shall now test the 
results we have just obtained. Misery must exist in the same pro- 
portion as vice. In the Hotel Dieu of the same city, there are, 
not including military beds, 176 beds, viz., — 

152 occupied by Roman Catholic?. 
23 - — Protestants. 

Likewise the Hospice de VHurnanite, destined to old people, gives 
us 230 beds, being 

195 occupied 1 y Roman Catholics. 
35 — Protestants. 

Thence, we find as a total, 

347 Roman Catholic poor. 
GO Protestant ditto. 

If the first number were in the same proportion as the popula- 
tion, it would be only double the second ; whereas it is nearly six 
times greater ! 

Nismes, it is true, contains a Protestant asylum where poor people 
are received gratuitously. But the number of sick persons there is 
comparatively small; the existence of such an establishment, 
besides, only proves more forcibly the wealth and liberality of 
those who support it, in order to prevent sending to mixed hospi- 
tals invalids belonging to their communion; the beds destined to 
such persons being often unoccupied. 

If we go on from a town to a department where Protestants are 
most numerous, we shall find, according to the General Statistics 
of France, published with the authorisation of the Minister of the 
Interior, by Alex. Ferriere, that "the Protestants of the Deux- 
Sevres are distinguished by great union, by a pure morality, and 
by more active industry l . " In the Moselle, " some anabaptist fa- 



1. Alexander Ferric-re's Statislique Generate de la France, p. 45, 



232 



milies are remarkable by the simplicity of their manners. Patient, 
submissive, docile, they avoid law suits and contestations. The 
Republic has no subjects more peaceful l . " 

But from a department let us rise to the whole State, and quote 
facts of a more general nature. 

For the purpose of obtaining documents beyond all discussion, 
we sought them from official sources. We had already consulted 
the archives of the Department of the Seine ; in the same manner 
our researches have been directed amongst those of the Public In- 
struction Office, the Home Office, and the Admiralty (Ministeres 
de V Instruction Publique el des Culles; de I'Interieur ; de la Marine 
et des Colonies). Tn order that our data might be more recent, we 
have obtained them not in the dust of public libraries, but in the 
Government-bureaux. Some have been given to us in print, 
others in MSS., some viva voce. We are willing to supply any 
one with the proof of our various assertions. So much by way of 
preface; now let us come to the point. 

Our first research bears upon the numerical proportion between 
the Roman Catholic and Protestant populations in France. On this 
subject two opinions prevail; some give 2,000,000 as the amount 
of French Protestants ; others lower the amount to J, 500, 000. No 
official report has ever been published to elucidate this point. The 
Census made in 1851, both by the government authorities and by 
the consistories, has allowed a state of uncertainty to subsist which, 
no doubt, will prevent the publication of the results 2 . We 
give, nevertheless, the number we have derived from authentic 
sources : — 

Roman Catholic population. 34,741,658 
Protestant ditto 1,538,181 

According to these items, the Protestants are to the Catholics 
about as 1 to 22; but, that our conclusions may be beyond all dis- 
pute, we shall take as the basis of our calculation sometimes the 
proportion of 1 to 20, sometimes that of 1 to 25, uniformly select- 
ing the one which the nature of the comparison instituted makes 
more favourable to Roman Catholicism. We now examine our 

1. Alexander Ferriere's Statistiquo Generate de la France, p. 24. — 2. We must explain here 
how the last Census has heen made, that the reader may understand how unfair it is to the 
Reformed populations. Every person who did not acknowledge himself as either Jew, Protes- 
tant, or .Mahometan, was put down as Roman Catholic! If an opposite system were adopted, 
we should prohahly find in France not only one million, but several millions of Protestants! 
Another proof of the erroneous results given by the Census : How many individuals, do our 
readers think, arc there in the department of the Seine, whose religion is stated as unknown? 
One! Yes, one! Thousands, evidently, never gave a personal answer. 



233 



remaining question, that of morality. Morality, we have already 
stated, can be only negatively appreciated. Let us, then, consider 
the prisons, and, first, the maisons centrales. According to the in- 
formation, for which we are indebted to the Home Office, there 
were, at the date of March 1st, 1854, — 

Protestants 503 

Roman Catholics 19,943 1 

In round numbers, the proportion is as 1 to 40 ; hence it follows 
that, taking the whole population as a term of comparison, the Ro- 
man Catholic prisoners are almost twice as numerous as the Pro- 
testants. From the maisons centrales, we proceed to the hulks. 

Here our printed documents have been supplied by the Admiralty. 
The exact title is as follows : — 

Admiralty Office. Statistics of the hulks, for the year 1852. 
Paris Imperial Printing Press. I854 3 . 

In the tabular view, No. 16, we read the following : — 

Population of the hulks, subdicided according to their religion — 

Roman Catholics... 6,415 

Lutherans 35 \ 

Calvinists 143 J 180 

Anglicans 2 ) 

Dividing 6,415 by 180, we have for quotient nearly 36 and not 
25, a number which expresses in an exaggerated manner the pro- 
portion between the Catholics and the Protestants. If we apply the 
term morality to mere absence of crime, the Protestants, then, have 
a moral superiority measured by the numerical difference between 
36 and 25. This is nearly what we had found for the maisons cen- 
trales ; here as 36 is to 25 ; there, as 40 is to 25. 

Let us examine the problem under another point of view. We 
have seen that the three departments of Gard, Herault, and Drome 
comprise the greatest agglomeration of Reformed Churches; the 
three neighbouring departments, on the contrary, namely, Puy de 
Dome, Cantal, and Upper Loire, are exclusively Catholic. We shall 
compare these two groups with respect to the quota they contribute 
to the inmates of the hulks, taking due account of the respective 
populations. The amount of these not being stated in the statisti- 

i. It might he ohjected that some Protestants declare themselves Roman Cathol'cs on enter- 
ing into prison, in order to avoid the ill will which they imagine is entertained against the 
minority. But as, on the other hand, many Roman Catholics call themselves Protestants that 
they may escape from the control of a chaplain priest, the compensation is more than esta- 
blished. We might quote facts which fully justify our last assertion. — 2. Mtmstere do la 
Mariw et dcs Colonies, statistique den Barjnes, annee 1852. Paris, imprimerie imperiale, 1854. 



234 



cal work we are now examining, we shall borrow the particulars 
from Balbi's geography : 

Puy-de-Dome 573,000 inhabitants 94 convicts. 

Canlal 259,000 — 72 — 

Upper Loire. 292,000 — 79 — 

1,124,000 245 or, 1 for every 4,546 inhabitants. 

Gard 357,000 inhabitants 65 convicts. 

Drome 300,000 — 44 — 

Hevault. 346,000 — 58 — 

1,003,000 167 or, 1 for every 6,005 inhabitants. 

If we neglect the fractions in both calculations, we shall therefore 
find on the Protestant side a superiority equal to that of 60 over 45; 
or, in other words, the relative amount of the population being 
taken into account, the Roman Catholics are more numerous at the 
hulks by one-fourth than the Protestants. 

This result is not so favourable to the Protestants as the former ; 
but then, in our second calculation, it should be borne in mind that 
we took three departments together as if they were completely Pro- 
testant, which is not the case; the first tabular view, on the con- 
trary, reckons only those individuals whose religious belief is well 
identified. The first statement, consequently, is the true one; but 
we can ascertain what the error in the second amounts to. Suppos- 
ing the population of the three departments to be exclusively Pro- 
testant, instead of being mixed, the moral advantage then would be 
doubled, and the comparison with the three other Catholic depart- 
ments would supply the result already furnished in the calculations 
of individual cases; viz, a Protestant superiority of one-half instead 
of one-fourth. So, the reader will perceive that we have verified 
mathematically, within one unit, the numbers 36 and 25 previously 
found. 

If we have dwelt upon this point, it was only to prove how easily 
truth can be found, provided we are on our way towards it. 

In the table No. 13, where convicts are classed according to their 
profession, we discover nine clergymen; their religion, it is true, 
is not stated, but we have a clue to it, for out of these nine we find 
five condemned for immoral practices ! What an argument against 
compulsory celibacy ! And yet there is nothing in that statement 
to astonish us ; ecclesiastical discipline cannot reform human nature, 

M. Keratry, on reading the above facts, would be astonished, not 
that criminals of the last-named description exist at all, but that 
their proportion is so small : " the Roman Catholic clergy, " says 
he, u scandalously countenances those amongst its own members 



235 



who have disgraced the sacred ministry ; hence it is that govern- 
ment appears sometimes to connive at guilt in consequence of judi- 
cial sentences not receiving their application ; hence it is that sen- 
tences of acquittal are recorded, the clauses of which are so many 
imputations against the purity of those who serve at the altar, 
whilst at the same time we blush at having to enter them in the 
records of justice. If the disciplinary rules were revised, we should 
he spared the scandalous scenes which are not to be met with in 
other religious communities, besides having a pledge of safety as to 
the purposes of a system unfortunately too contrary to our social 
order. Gregory VII knew well what he was doing when he impos- 
ed celibacy upon the priests • he gave them the clergy as their fa- 
mily, a priest for their sovereign, and Rome for their country. He 
thus deprived at one blow the nations of their moral and civil se- 
curities ; what the result has been amongst the Roman Catholic po- 
pulations, is very well known *. *' 

But the most valuable piece of information we have found in this 
statistic of the hulks, bears upon the question in its widest extent, 
and although it relates, not to France exclusively, but to Europe, 
we shall state it here, because it belongs decidedly to our subject. 
We allude to foreign convicts. Our comparison, now, will have to 
be instituted between the number of criminals suplied by the va- 
rious nations, relatively to the number of the entire population and 
their distance from us. For it is clear that, in proportion as a state 
is removed from France, the probability will decrease for its inha- 
bitants coming amongst us to undergo sentences of condemnation. 
Let us then select, to compare them by twos, nations equally re- 
moved from us, and whose population is nearly the same, in order 
to get nearer the truth ; we shall afterwards take the average on 
both sides. 

Austria and Great Britain, two empires of first-rate importance, 
may be brought into parallel together • the one is separated from 
us by a narrow channel, and the other by a small state. Now, the 
following is the number of convicts they both supply to the popula- 
tion of the French hulks : — 

Austria (Roman Catholic) 11 convicts. 
Great Britain (Protestant) 2 — 

That is to say, five times more criminals in Austria than in Great 
Britain. 

Spain and Prussia are our next door neighbours ; the population 



t, Du Cuite, liy Keratry, p. 70. 



236 



is nearly the same in both countries; they may, therefore, be 
appropriately compared together, and we find as the result — 

Spain (Roman Catholic). 96 convicts. 
Prussia (Protestant) — 15 — 

six times more criminals for the Catholic nation. 

The distance and population of Bavaria and Holland suggest 
another parallel : 

Bavaria (Roman Catholic). 14 convicts. 
Holland (Protestant) 3 — 

Nearly five times more criminals in Bavaria than in Holland. 

Denmark is farther than Belgium, whilst its population is less 
numerous. In order to render the comparison true, let us 
double the number of convicts for the former country, and we shall 
have : — 

Belgium (Roman Catholic) 36 convicts. 

Denmark (Protestant) (double number) 20 — 

Nearly double the number of criminals on the Catholic side , as 
before. 

Switzerland contains a strong Roman Catholic minority; we shall, 
however, consider it as entirely Protestant, and, if our principle is 
true, we may reckon upon finding a smaller advantage for the na- 
tion which we have erroneously set down as exclusively Protestant. 

Sardinian States (Roman Catholic). 58 convicts. 
Switzerland (Protestant) 39 — 

A result which corresponds with our anticipations. 

We come, finally, to the last and most singular part of this pa- 
rallel. 

The Roman States are at a much greater distance from France 
than Wurtemberg; but the population is double that of the last 
named little kingdom. These two circumstances being in inverse 
ratio, balance one another, and our comparison remains quite fair. 

Roman States 
Wurtemberg. 

His Holiness, consequently, supplies France with from eleven to 
twelve times the number of criminals which come from the domi- 
nions of a Protestant Prince ! He that hath ears to hear, let him 
hear! 

In order to be more exact still, let us keep a strict account of the 
population, and take the average number of convicts : — 



80 convicts. 
7 — 



237 



ROHAN CATHOLIC 
COUNTRIES. 


POPULATION- 


CONVICTS. 






3-2,000,000 


11 


Spain 


13,900,000 


96 


Bavaria 


•4,070.000 


14 


Belgium 


3,560,000 


36 


Sardinian States 


4,300,000 


58 


Roman States 


2,590,000 


80 




60,420,000 


295 



PROTESTANT 
COUNTRIES. 



Great Britain.., 

Prussia 

Holland 

Denmark 

Switzerland.. . , 
Wurtemberg.. . 
United Slates • 



23,400.000 
12,164,000 
2,558,000 
1,950,000 
1,980,001) 
1,520,000 
23,000,000 



66,572,000 



79 



Our readers will see that although the Protestant population is 
the greatest, the number of convicts it supplies is from three to 
four times less. This general result proves the correctness of the 
partial facts we have already obtained, and the whole sum of our 
illustrations, taken together, confirm our previous statements re- 
specting the various nations. 

We have examined prisons and the hulks; but there remains a 
class of criminals who escape beyond the reach of hulks and pri- 
sons; we allude to suicides. Tf, however, we endeavour to ascer- 
tain the religious belief of those unfortunate individuals, we find 
in M. de Guerry's work a test with which he unwittingly supplies 
us— a test the more valuable, because it carries along with itself 
the condemnation of the religious doctrine which encourages crime. 

We have already noticed that when crimes can be compounded 
for, a criminal is seldom deterred from committing them. The 
Italian robber, the Spanish prostitute, satisfy the claims of 
conscience by dividing their profits with the Virgin Mary. We 
find in history that more than one murderer has taken the holy 
communion as a preparation for the crime he was about to perpe- 
trate. Something similar occurs in the case of suicides. M. de 
Guerry gives us a long list of instances in which that crime has been 
committed under the safeguard of the Roman Catholic religion. 
Sometimes it is a man who hangs himself m asking God's pardon; 
or a woman, on the point of taking poison, begs that masses may be 
said for the good of her soul. On other occasions, the self-mur- 
derer has provided himself with amulets and small prints which 
reveal the state of his thoughts. The greater number ground their 
hopes of heaven on the fact that they have suffered here below ; 

1. We place here the United States, which we could not compare with any country in our 
series of parallels, hecause their natural point of contrast is to be found in the colonies which 
belong to Spain. By adding the United States to this tabular view, the Protestant total exceeds 
by more than six millions the Roman Catholic one. 



238 



they present as an expiatory offering the apparent sacrifice of their 
life, in conformity with the Roman Catholic doctrine that he who 
suffers may offer his troubles as a pleasing oblation to God. But 
the learned statistician must speak for himself : — 14 Many persons 
will no doubt be astonished at this manifestation of religious 
feelings, at the very moment when the individual who expresses 
them is on the point of committing a deed which religion condemns 
as a crime. A fact such as this will appear to them unaccountable. 
Similar discrepancies, yet, are more common than one might 
suppose. Several suicides cross themselves before hurrying into 
eternity ; others kneel down and say their prayers ; on a few are to 
be found rosaries and devotional books l . " 

Can one case be quoted in which a Protestant has justified from 
the Bible an attempt on his own life ? 

The following question meets us at the close of every one of the 
parallels we have drawn : " Are we right in ascribing to religious 
faith, correct here, erroneous there, the differences which strike 
us between the state of civilisation in various countries?" It 
would seem that an affirmative answer to this question is pre- 
eminently correct here, when both terms of the comparison are 
taken on the same soil, in the same nation, under the influence of 
the same laws. We wish, however, to render this truth still more 
evident by a quotation which shall bring before our eyes French 
Catholicism — not the Catholicism of unbelieving Paris, but that 
to be met with in Britanny, where the priests are absolute masters. 
We borrow the following paragraph from a Roman Catholic writer, 
who has seen what he relates : — 

" Will you have an idea of the eagerness and success with which 
our clergy enlighten the people and help on the progress of civilisa- 
tion ? I shall not describe the degradation of Spain and Italy under 
clerical domination; nor shall I turn your attention to the prospe- 
rity of Catholic Ireland ; — Ireland who has suffered at the hands 
of her priests quite as much as at those of the English. No ; I only 
say, look a few yards off, look at Britanny. There the clergy enjoy 
full swing ; no one thwarts their actions ; they bask in all the 
liberty they have sued for; their rule is despotic ; what a state of 
destitution, consequently, both for the body and the soul! 

" I have visited the celebrated pardon 2 of Saint Anne d'Auray, 
in Britanny. Pilgrims flock there from a distance of fifteen or 
twenty leagues in every direction. Dirty, wearied by a long jour- 



1» De Guerry, p. 68. — 2. The name pardon is given to religious pilgrimages in Britanny. 



239 



ney through detestable roads, those wretches lie down promis- 
cuously for rest under hoops fixed in the ground and covered with 

sheets There are plenty of shops for the sale of rosaries and 

sacred prints; but no books, not even prayer-books; this would 
suppose that the purchasers know how to read. Now what is the 
use of that? The rosary is enough for people to pray by. You 
may see a goodly number of men and women going round the 
church on their knees; give them a trifle, and they will offer to do 
the same on your account ; they will save you the trouble, and for 
the sum of five or six sous you purchase merits in heaven. 

(( The ear is struck at once by a metallic sound, which is kept 
up without any interruption; it proceeds from a cascade of sous 
falling as heavily as a storm-shower into a couple of casks, placed 
on each side of the choir. Behind these casks stands a priest, who 
brings the patena to the lips of each pilgrim as he approaches, a 
wax candle in the one hand, and his offering in the other. At the 
moment he is about to kiss the patena, a sacristan lights the wax 
candle ; this ceremony is hardly gone through when a second sa- 
cristan blows the candle out again, and sets it aside, for the 

church Those peasants would never dream of reflecting, of 

reasoning on such facts. The priest has spoken, therefore it is all 
right, all true. 

i( Each Breton church has its relic or its wonder-working saint. 
The last-named worthies, in their turn, have each a special pro- 
vince, from which they are requested not to depart. One is a 
chiropodist; another cures head-aches; gout, cholics, ophthalmias, 
nervous diseases are presided over by distinct saints, and no one is 
allowed to encroach upon his neighbour's grounds. The chapel at 
Loc Ronau in the Finistere, exceptionally, is a sort of neutral 
district, w 7 here every neighbouring cure has a right to send his 
saint; it is a real miracle fair. The priest does not attend himself, 
custom forbids it; but he opens in his parish a species of auction 
for the letting of the miraculous image; the highest bidder gets it. 
The cure once paid, the other trader proceeds to drive at his own 
risks whatever bargains he can. This is an ingenious manner of 
bringing the theory of stock-exchange speculations within the ideas 
and resources of the country. 

" One of the cure's tenants had made a first-rate collection, but 
his drinking propensities happened to be quite as great as the faith 
of his customers ; after numerous visits paid to the public house, 
he felt his head rather heavy, his sight had become confused; in 
short, he found it impossible to go on with the sale. Two hours 



2i0 



still remained, however, before the close of the day; determined to 
make the best of them, he cried out, ' Who will buy the remainder 
of my saint's privileges? I take thirty sous for them !' ' Thirty 
sons? here you are/ Our drunkard pockets the money, goes to 
sleep, and his successor sits down at the table ; but he had only 
collected twenty-five sous when the first purchaser returned. This 
one insisted upon the other shutting the shop; the sub-tenant was 
determined to continue the sale by candle-light. A fight ensued in 
the presence of the plaster-saint, who kept looking on with the 
greatest gravity, whilst the crowd, quite as impassible, formed a 
ring around the two champions. 

" As an insurmountable bulwark against the invasion of philoso- 
phical ideas, the clergy is most careful to keep up the use of the 
bas-breton dialect. The Jesuits have at Pontcroix a school, where 
they teach both Latin and Greek to 300 pupils; but as for French, 
not one word. In country districts it would be impossible for any 
one to make himself understood, and the only interpreter is the 
cure. Whatever information you wish to impart to the people 
must be conveyed trough the medium of the priest. Suppose the 
case of a political crisis, and of the clergy declaring against the Go- 
vernment, what will you do ? Will you go and speechify before 
breton peasants? Will you prove to them who is right and who is 
wrong ? It would be throwing away your eloquence. On the other 
hand, by pronouncing one word which you cannot understand, the 
priest is able to raise a mob against you, and to have you torn 
in pieces. 

" Britanny is still the land of the Druids ; the only difference is 
that the Druids now-a-days are called cures or rectors. For 
example, the forest of Broceliaude is celebrated in the romances of 
the Round Table. There might be seen the vale from which no 
one ever returned, the enchanter Merlin's tomb, the platform, and 
the fountain of Baranton. By pouring some water from the foun- 
tain on the platform, one could raise a cloud in the sky. A Christian 
clergy has retained this Celtic superstition. 

" People go to pray at the chapel of our Lady of Hatred in the 
neighbourhood of Treguier, to obtain the death of an enemy; 
there the rosary is the murderer's weapon, and the virgin is his 
accomplice. 

iC Britanny abounds in fountains possessed of marvellous qua- 
lities. Men and women, young and old, healthy and diseased, all 
bathe there indiscriminately. If you are in good health, a dip will 
preserve you from the attacks of illness; if you are sick, this is the 



241 



best cure for the ague. Rheumatism is cured by pouring water 
inside the patient's coat sleeves ; everywhere the priests are pro- 
prietors of the good fountain, and applicants must pay to make use 
of them. 

" In another locality, near Landernau, horses are brought to 
church at least once a-year ; they attend mass; it is true that they 
go to the offertory only by proxy. 

" I have seen in a village church a distaff covered with flax, stuck 
up at the entrance of the choir. This distaff is offered to the Virgin 
by one of the female parishioners. On Sunday the cure will ap- 
point another woman to spin out this offering — an honou r which 
is most earnestly solicited. The ceremony is renewed every week, 
that is to say, fifty-two times a-year. The produce, of course, 
goes to the cure. 

" The Breton curt has quietly managed to re-establish tithes or 
their equivalent in kind. He then sells these offerings publicly 
at the very foot of the cross, where they have been brought. This 
is called a sale under the cross. Such a sale is always highly pro- 
ductive ; in the first place, because the various articles being se- 
lected for God are all of a superior quality ; secondly, because the 
ceremony of consecrating has increased their value. 

" Generally speaking, every species of offering is accepted ; at 
some pardons, however, the nature of the oblation is distinctly 
specified. At Our Lady of Ralecq, for instance, white hens only 
used to be presented ; but, as such fowls are scarce, the cure, out of 
pity for the perplexity of his parishioners, has decided at length 
that two black hens are as acceptable to God as one white one. 
What a relief for those poor people ! 

" Those who derive from such means their power and their in- 
come, are they likely to desire earnestly and with all their heart 
the progress of enlightenment ? If they say so, they are only tell- 
ing another untruth. No; it is impossible for me to admit that 
the interest of the clergy is to give information to the people. 
I therefore cannot believe such to be their earnest wish. An ab- 
solute sway over them is the only thing they desire 1 ." 

But Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholic clergy are perhaps 
different in the remainder of France from what they are in Bri- 
tanny ! No ; we may be deceived by the difference between the 
various populations; but this affects neither the clergy nor their 
doctrine. If Roman Catholicism is not exactly the same every- 



1. Reratry, pp. 49 to 61. 
T. II. 



16 



242 



where, it is certainly aiming at uniformity: now it selects its patron 
not in London or in Paris, but at Rome and at Madrid. It is the 
same with epochs as with places. The mediaeval clergy entertained 
the pretensions afterwards harboured by those of modern society ; 
the priests of the new empire are exactly the counterpart of those 
who lived under the Restoration. Whilst we read M. Keratry's 
book, published in 1827, we might believe that its date is 1854. 
By quoting from it, w r e exhibit the character of the Catholic clergy 
during the whole of this century. Let the reader peruse the fol- 
lowing extract, and he will no longer be astonished at the contrast 
we have just now been considering : i( It is well known," says 
M. Keratry, "that Roman Catholicism, by encouraging within its 
pale the multiplication of emblems, rash practices, religious associa- 
tions, mysticism, useless, local, and material ceremonies, which 
have overgrown it, has favoured throughout France a low tone of 
public morality. In many a district village of the kingdom to 
which we belong, in many a commune of Lower Britanny, for in- 
stance, Christian worship has been so completely turned aside from 
its noble origin, that were it not for that inner voice which is 
never entirely quenched, even by the most deplorable aberrations 
of our reason, we might say that in such localities our Heavenly 
Father is neither known nor worshipped. 

iC Ultramontane nations have moulded the Creator too much ac- 
cording to the pattern left by Epicurus. They have transformed 
Heaven into a large machine, where everything is active, is busy, 
is at work — except God himself. This is the degradation of 
Christianity, nor are we to feel astonished that human degradation 
follows wherever such ideas penetrate *. " 

(e In the prostration of human reason, Rome had admitted a 
mass of superfetations which ought to have vanished away before the 
light of the Gospel. She has ever been consistent with her own 
views. Look at part of the South and North-west of France ; con- 
sider, likewise, the various denominations of Protestantism ; com- 
pare and judge! 2 " 

" The pretensions of Ultramontanists, favoured by the revival 
of religious feeling which followed our civil disturbances, have 
everywhere intruded upon public worship, thus destroying the 
generous hopes of many. The numerous subdivisions of Roman 
Catholicism at present into brotherhoods and associations, all de- 
rived from absolute power, are in accordance with that power 



1. Keratry, pp. 41 to 63. — 2. idem, p. 45. 



243 



alone. They are destined either to destroy representative govern- 
ment, or to be swallowed up by it themselves. Between such a 
disposition and the feeling of hatred, there is only one step, for 
there can be no concord between servility and liberty. Tt would 
be easy to prove that Ultramontane authority has become more 
temporal than ever. It has its arms, it raises it subsidies, it or- 
ganises its tribunals, it enrols its men ; without taking the slightest 
notice of the ideas of justice, which they have oftentimes per- 
verted, since they have assumed the right of deciding upon them, 
the Ultramontanists are unceasingly interposing themselves between 
the subjects and the laws of the State, between the citizens in 
their civil relations to one another, between contracting parties, 
between servants and masters, whose secrets they have thus taught 
their inferiors to reveal. There is no place where Ultramontane 
authority will not penetrate for the purpose of laying down the law 
according to views merely human. Question the maiden, the young 
wife, or the mother ; see those anxious forebodings respecting the 
rights which our French Charter has vainly insured to us, respect- 
ing our modern institutions, respecting the children whose legiti- 
mate birth is acknowledged by the country, and the settlement we 
intend making for them, respecting the vote which the father gives 
when he is called to take a part in any electoral transactions, re- 
specting even the use he makes of the money he has derived from 
labour and industry ; consult the grave itself, and it will tell you 
that the kingdom of our new Catholicism does belong to this world ! 
Forms have become everything; they carry along with them the 
substance which is now reduced to an accessory of very little im- 
portance. Countenancing above all, as they do, superstitious opinions, 
they go so far as to prescribe the education of youth; what they aim 
at is man's self-abdication; they impose it upon us, they lead us 
on by a straight line to bigotry : we call to witness the teachers who 
have the charge of the rising generation. When we see walking 
about our streets those beardless pedagogues destined to train up 
citizens and to educate men; those new-fangled professors, just 
fresh from the plough, where, even, they had no abilities to spare ; 
that herd of youths withdrawn from manual labour for the purpose 
of adding a whole kingdom to the realms of ignorance, we cannot 
imagine that we have before our eyes the successors of the cele- 
brated Ecole Normale *, the suppression of which has distressed 
all the true friends of the country. No ; we cannot believe that 

ii The £coie Normale, or superior training school for professors and lectures, was temporarily 
suppressed in 1822. It is now re-established. 



244 

by such means the prosperity of French industry is to be fostered: 
and if we did not generally see by the side of these vegetative 
beings a gendarme ready to lend them his assistance , we might 
fancy that we are witnessing some grotesque ceremony soon to be 
concluded by the presence of the magistrate. 

i: The duty of religion should be not merely to drive away the 
accredited agents of error and superstition who have crept out 
of the ground at the voice of Ultramontanism ; the Reformation 
must bear upon the power which has called them forth: religion 
itself must be freed from the circumstances which degrade it. and 
which bring it continually in a state of hostility against the country. 
It is not astonishing that Rome should trifle with the scanty remains 
of religion she has left in Europe " 

• The old faith exists no longer either within the Church, who 
endeavours to restore it once more, or amongst the councils of 
princes bound together under a mystic title 2 . " 

" Supposing a complete restoration of faith were possible, would 
it not bring back along with it all the bloody incidents of Saint 
Bartholomews Day! We will venture to affirm that there are 
points in the tenets of Roman Catholicism which no one can be 
thoroughly convinced of without hating to the death him who 
does not pay to such tenets every honour and respect believed to be 
due to them 3 " 

" Roman Catholicism, organised according to a plan in harmony 
with the wants of barbarous ages, has either been unable or unwil- 
ling to help on the social progress. It has vented all its hatred 
upon public prosperity ; it has remained aloof from modern society; 
and modern society in its turn, not anxious for self destruction, has 
likewise kept at a distance. The immense majority of the nation, 
thinking, acting, strict m its morals, commendable by its domestic 
habit-, avoids the influence of Catholicism. 

" Nobles and government servants, it is true, are regular at their 
attendance at public worship, but as far as the forms are concerned 
we feel inclined to think that, after having suffered from the spirit 
of irreligion which they had contributed to spread in former days 
amongst the lower classes, they have now settled themselves in 
the nave of the Church actuated by the dispositions of a man who 
wishes to be about his business. As for the government agents, 
prayer is for them a duty of the same nature as the election of de- 
puties. Thus surrounded, the priest, standing before the sacred 

l. Keiatry. pp. 16, od. — -2, Allusion to the Holy Alliance between Russia, Prussia, and 
Austria. — 3. Keratry, p. 55, 37. 



245 



and mysterious symbols of the faith, seems to he there only for the 
purpose of concluding a compact. We feel pained as we write it ; 
bat, from the present direction given to worship, and from the 
thoughts which it suggests, the very altar has been transformed into 
a board upon which two contracting parties have signed a treaty of 
mutual insurance against the nation. 

" We have no right to be astonished at seeing a citizen belonging 
to a religion which he abstains from professing; he constantly finds 
it armed against his liberty, his civic rights, against all the things 
which he holds most dear. He claims from the Church prayers 
which are without importance in his own eyes, because they have 
no influence on the character of those who pronounce them; and 
he sends his daughter to a place of worship the road to which he 
has forgotten himself. It is a just subject of amazement that faith, 
whose duty it is to lead men to happiness, begins by pulling down 
everywhere the monuments of genius, destroying industry, impo- 
verishing the citizens, and reducing the number of the population; 
yet this is nevertheless the sight offered to us at the present time 
by the three countries the most Catholic, but in fact the most irre- 
ligious and the most wretched in the whole civilised world i . " 

Such was the French Roman Catholic society in 18 w 27. Such it 
is in 1854 : Rome cannot change, but it can perish. God grant 
that her last fate may not meet her on the ruins of another nation, 
fallen a prey to her cruelty. God grant that " the Protestant Church, 
remarkable by its high degree of intellectual culture, by the fervour 
of its religious sentiments, and by the great purity of its morals 2 , " 
may not one day be compelled to follow the example of its fore- 
fathers in carrying abroad the benefits it would have bestowed upon 
its native country. 



After having brought to an end this comparative study of the 
various nations, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, we were so 
struck by the superiority of the one over the other, that we were on 
the point of drawing our own conclusions. But a scruple occurred : 
what might be said in favour of opposite assertions? Hence we 
have resolved upon examining likewise the statements brought for- 
ward by objectors. 

1. Keratry, p. 445. — 2, Sclmitzler, vol. n, p. 135. 



1 



THE OBJECTIONS EXAMINED. 



Our subject has recently been discussed in two Roman Catholic 
theological works. The first is entitled : Protestantism and Ca- 
tholicism Compared in their Connexion with the Civilisation of Eu- 
rope, by Jacques Balmes; and the second, on Protestantism and all 
other Heresies in their Connexion with Socialism, by Auguste Ni- 
colas. M. Balmes begins with the question of principles; he goes 
so high and so far in the region of metaphysics that we lose sight of 
him. But it is no concern of ours. Our question is, above all, a 
question of facts . The world is tired of ranting ; it knows long since 
that the tongue of man can utter both sweet and bitter words, can 
plead both for and against with equal facility, it will no longer put 
up with high-sounding sentences; nothing short of well-proved 
facts will do. Consequently we are not going here to refute such 
and such a chapter of M. Balmes' work, in which the author endea- 
vours to prove that man must of necessity be intolerant, that the 
Church had the right of establishing the inquisitions, etc., etc. 
This may be the opinion of M. Balmes; it is not a fact, and so we 
leave it. 

In the second place, M. Balmes dates Catholicism as far back as 
Jesus Christ, and asserts that all the good that has been done in the 
world for the last eighteen hundred years is the work of Catholicism ; 
but the writer forgets one very simple distinction : viz., that Catho- 
licism and Christianity are far from being synonymous ; to confound 
the one with the other is to lay down as a fact precisely what is a 



248 



matter of discussion. It is to assert that the Faith of Rome is the 
same as that of Jerusalem, that the doctrine of the Popes is the 
same as that of the Apostles; and that the Italians and Spaniards of 
the present day lead the same life as the Christians of the Primitive 
Church. Now all this we deny. The Roman Catholic Church 
sprang up about the fourth century; she has gained ground and 
grown older ; she is no longer what she was in her infancy; neither, 
above all , does she resemble the Church of Christ, such as this 
church appeared eighteen centuries ago. The works, therefore, of 
the Protestantism of our own day cannot be compared with those ot 
the Primitive Church ; for the children of the Reformation might say, 
as well as the disciples of Rome, and with better reason still : the 
Primitive Church is my mother, for I am like her, and you are not ! 

As M. Balmes delights to throw around Catholicism the garb of 
antiquity in order to render it respectable , so he likes to keep Pro- 
testantism in the cradle, that he may taunt it with the faults of its 
infancy. But the child has grown and come to maturity ; a man 
for the last three hundred years, it travels the world everywhere, 
showing itself and acting. What matters ! our author is determined 
to know it and to study it, as it appeared during the sixteenth cen- 
tury. From this point of view the comparison of course must be- 
come favourable to the Romish Church; she wraps herself up in 
the ancient mantle of the apostles, and tearing from the Reforma- 
tion the cloak of modern civilisation, she says to the world : judge 
between us ! Our readers will perceive here a double act of of in- 
justice. It is not at the day of his birth that one can appreciate a 
man, but when he has attained the age of maturity. According to 
the same rule, you should take both the Protestantism and Catho- 
licism of our own times, and institute a comparison between them. 
When a new faith spreads itself throughout an old society, two 
distinct effects are produced. An extraordinary fervour is developed 
in some, whilst the prejudices of the past impair the faith of others. 
Thus, at Jerusalem, even in the days of the apostles, the power of 
the Christian life manifested itself admirably amongst the true dis- 
ciples, whilst at the same time judaising Christians, nay, St. 
Peter even, to the great indignation of St. Paul, preserved many 
practices belonging to the Mosaic dispensation. In the same way 
the reforms of the sixteenth century had remained so long in the 
Church of Rome, that they had retained many of its characteristics. 
An unfrocked priest loses neither at once nor ever completely 
those mechanical habits under which his body has become bent, 
his eye quailing, his step embarrassed. So that at the present time 



249 



it is as easy to point out an ex-priest as a quondam Israelite. Lu- 
ther, Calvin, and many others, then, have, to some extent, perse- 
vered in the ways which the Pope first taught them ; they confound- 
ed, for instance, temporal and spiritual things, and fuom this 
confusion many evils have issued. But, since then, this wound, the 
sad legacy of Roman Catholicism, has healed under the salutary in- 
fluence of the principles of the Reformation ; if not entirely closed 
everywhere, in some places it is cured, and in others it is gradually 
disappearing; the vital strength of Protestantism supplies the re- 
medy, and if people will not judge of the Reformation by what it 
must naturally become, let them judge of it at least by what it is 
already. America has entirely rejected State religion; the Dis- 
senters form half the population of England ; elsewhere, the Reform- 
ed Church, if assuming the character of a national establishment, is 
tolerant : the priests celebrate mass in London, in Berlin, in Am- 
sterdam, whereas no Protestant minister is allowed to preach pub- 
licly at Rome, Madrid, or Lisbon. Do not judge of a religion 
either from first enthusiasm of her converts, or from the old pre- 
judice of her neophytes ; let us wait till the tree has produced its 
fruits, and then we can judge. In a word, let us compare the Pro- 
testantism and the Catholicism of our own day — not the Reforma- 
tion of the sixteenth century, then new-born, with the Catho- 
licism of the time of Jesus Christ — a Catholicism which did not 
exist. 

These general considerations simplify, as we see, many subjects. 
We are now limited to the discussion of facts, and almost exclu- 
sively of contemporary facts. The question, thus examined, be- 
comes easy, interesting, and of present importance. We have circum- 
scribed it within limits from which we will not depart. So, in the 
work of M. Balmes, we take no notice of his long disquisitions on 
the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, on virginity, on the influence of 
chivalry and the manners of the barbarians, on the march of in- 
tellect since the eleventh century, etc., etc. 

Our field of inquiry is already singularly circumscribed. The 
work of M. Nicolas will not enlarge it ; for not only does this author 
reproduce the ideas, but the very words of the former writer. It is 
then, finally, to the examination of M. Nicolas's volume that we 
must limit ourselves. 

This work may be divided into two parts : in the first, M. Nicolas 
seeks to prove that Protestantism and Socialism are one ; in the se- 
cond, that Protestantism is contrary to toleration, intellectual deve- 
lopment, and morality. Our business is not with the first part and 



250 



by far the longest part of the book ; we need only confine ourselves 
to an examination of the second, which is comprised in 150 pages. 
Let not our readers, therefore, be frightened. This critique cannot 
be long, especially as our task will be chietly limited to the mere 
quoting from a work which carries along with it its own refuta- 
tion. 

Nothing helps so much to judge a composition as an acquaintance 
with the author. This must be our preliminary step, and we shall 
endeavour to derive this knowledge from the book itself. We should 
like to insert here in its integrity an article published by the Revue 
de Strasbourg (for January, 4853) : the author of this paper proves 
that M. Nicolas sometimes plagiarises, and sometimes misquotes; 
on one occasion he mistakes men for cities ; on another, cities for 
men ; hut, as our readers can peruse in the Revue the excellent ar- 
ticle we are now alluding to, we prefer illustrating the elasticity of 
M. Nicolas's conscience by a specimen which we have studied for 
ourselves. 

The assertion of M. Nicolas is as follows : Protestantism tolerates 
unbelief and immorality (that's all); now for his arguments: 
" Protestantism is for immorality what it is for unbelief : toleration 
itself. Do you require a singularly conclusive instance of this 
fact? Here you have it. One of the most upright, pious, pure-mind - 
ed doctors of Protestantism, the lamented M. Vinet, writing a trea- 
tise on the qualifications necessary for the sacred ministry, says : 
' Can doubts render the vocation null? We answer: 4. There 
would be few legitimate calls, if a man was disqualified by his 
doubts. 2. Study, experience, the exercise of the ministry itself 
will raise new surmises ; but it will be objected : a man sent to solve 
mental difficulties of others, can he be a doubter himself? No, not 
absolutely; for we are not speaking of a minister who is a sceptic 
or an infidel, but of a man who is not quite clear upon all subjects, 
and who sometimes will have to acknowledge it. ■ So much for 
faith; now we come to morality : ( Can certain feelings annul the 
call ? The feelings we have in view are scruples of conscience, and 
the difficulty is answered by the principles already stated l . ' 

" These words need no comment/' adds M. Nicolas; "we may 
judge of the flocks by the pastors \ " 

M. Nicolas, we see, asserts that: " the lamented " Protestant 
M. Vinet tolerates unbelief and immorality amongst ministers. Such 
is the conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing passage ; and, to 

I'. Treatise on Pastoral Theology, pp. 107 and 108, — 2. Nicolas, p. 573. 



251 



speak the truth, the words here quoted as those of M. Vinet autho- 
rise such an inference. Now, what would you say, reader, if you 
were told that the words of M. Vinet are so mutilated that, were 
they restored to their original, they would have a directly opposite 
meaning? Be convinced of this hy reading what M. Nicolas has 
taken good care not to quote : ee Speaking of evil inclinations : hut 
if they are evil/' says M. Vinet, " they are alike incompatible with 
the professions of Christianity, and w 7 ith the ministry. At the same 
time, as the scandal would be greater in a minister than in a pri- 
vate Christian, the following question may be put : Will it not be 
necessary for him to begin by conquering these inclinations-as a 
private Christian ? He answers, perhaps, I can do so still more easily 
as a minister. This is venturing much : double or quits. If the 
church is a hospital, the ministers are not the patients, but the 
physicians. They must enter it in a good state of health. No 
doubt they may benefit themselves, but there is something very 
repugnant in such a calculation. They run the risk of injuring 
the w 7 ork of the ministry instead of being benefited by it 

In one word, evil inclinations are incompatible with a profession 
of Christianity, but still more so with the pastoral office. Such is 
M. Vinet's affirmation, and yet you are bold enough to say that he 
tolerates... But wait : this is not all. 

Not only does M. Vinet not tolerate evil inclinations, either in 
the minister or in the private Christian, he goes so far as to forbid 
the former " to indulge certain tastes, which, although innocent 
in themselves, are not convenient for the minister. They annul 
the vocation/' says he, " if the vocation does not either annul or 
overcome them. " And this is said, not in another work, not 
even in another chapter, but in the very same page quoted by 
M. Nicolas, and you are bold enough to say... But wait a little : 
we have not yet done with this falsification. 

So much for morality : let us see the part which concerns faith. 
M. Nicolas quotes M. Vinet in the following manner: " Should 
doubts disqualify a pastor for his vocation ? W e reply, 1 st , that 
there would be few legitimate vocations if this were the case; 
2 d 'y, That study, experience, the exercise of the ministry itself, will 
often raise fresh doubts." This " " belongs to M, Nicolas. 
M. Vinet had put " 3 Al v;" why, then, alter the numbers? Simply 
for the purpose of concealing the suppression of the real "2 dI V* 
which stands thus : " According to this hypothesis, the number 

1. Vinet pp. 108 and 109. 



232 

of private Christians, even, would be few. For, although a man 
may attain to a state of mind in which all is light, (des elres dis- 
gracies) incomplete beings alone have never doubted. " 

Thus the doubts of which M. Vinet speaks may exist in a man 
who will afterwards have a clear apprehension of all things, and, 
some few lines lower down, the author adds : "it is not, of course, 
of a sceptic or infidel minister that I am writing, but of a man 
who does not see clearly through every question. " 

And such is the writer a propos of whom it is affirmed that £C Pro- 
testantism is for unbelief toleration itself ! " He has just been 
saying that he does not allude to a " sceptic " minister, and, on the 
strength of this plain assertion, M. Nicolas boldly declares that he 
does apologise for unbelief! Well, we are not afraid of making 
another statement, and it will be this : M.Alexandre Vinet has 
been basely calumniated and hypocritically lamented! 

Our readers know now the character of the individual who is 
about to prove that Protestantism is intolerance, darkness, and im- 
morality ; whilst Catholicism is identical with liberty, intellectual 
culture, and morality ! 

M. Nicolas starts thus : u For the last hundred years men have 
agreed to say that in the great struggle between barbarism and ci- 
vilisation, the Church has shown itself intolerant, opposed to intel- 
lectual progress, nay, even favouring corruption; whilst it is to 
Protestantism and to philosophy that we owe liberty of conscience, 
mental development, and a high standard of morality 1 . " 

Certainly, as M. Nicolas asserts more than once, it is generally 
acknowledged by public opinion, and even by those writers who do 
not set up for the apologists quand meme of Catholicism, that to 
Protestantism we owe liberty of conscience, mental development, 
and a higher standard of morality. Moreover, in a time like the 
present, when every one examines for himself, it strikes us that an 
opinion which becomes so general must have some foundation, and 
that we may place some trust in a cause supported by so many 
champions, against M. Nicolas who stands almost alone. But, after 
all, we do not think a majority of votes sufficient here; let us exa- 
mine the words of our author himself. His arguments may perhaps 
outweigh what " men have agreed to say. " 

" Catholicism/' says he, "in this impleading, has besides been 
condemned unheard. It has not had a judge, but only accusers ; 
interested and unjust accusers." 



1. Nicolas, p. 439. — 



2. Hem, p. 4-iO. 



253 



It is very easy to brand as an accuser any person who judges ns. 
At this rate, no one could hold an opinion of his ow n ; for, as soon as 
he gave an unfavourable judgment, he would be called not a judge 
but an accuser. We appeal to our readers : have we not selected 
our authorities against Catholicism almost uniformly amongst 
Roman Catholics, even amongst their clergy? Is it our fault if Ro- 
manists by birth , the moment they begin to reflect, are not Ro- 
manists by conviction ? It would be rather too odd if we were called 
upon to produce a condemnation of Roman Catholicism from the 
lips of its apologists : M. Nicolas himself, for instance. 

Never mind, let us try. As he has undertaken to prove to us 
the erroneous nature of the general opinion, it is worth while lis- 
tening to him. First, then, M. Nicolas appeals from our Protestant 
prejudices to the honesty of our sentiments. 

Is this a little flattery in order to seduce us? We do not like to 
think so, and if it is seriously that w^e are reminded of the honesty 
of our sentiments, we are at a loss to understand how the same man 
can ascribe to all Protestants Satan as their common father ; how 
he can tell them that the end of their doctrines is the u suppression 
of all morality, and the destruction of society." 

After these preambles, M. Nicolas comes to the point. His first 
argument is the identification of Catholicism with toleration, and 
of Protestantism with intolerance. But this trick of legerdemain 
can be accomplished only by altering the proper meaning of words. 
So, M. Nicolas begins by telling us that for those who find fault with 
Roman Catholicism "liberty of religion has become liberty of irreli- 
gion ; nay, the liberty of attacking religion *, " 

To be sure ; and we belong to that number. There is no liberty, 
as we believe, in a person's walking towards a goal marked out to 
him beforehand. Whilst we claim the freedom of saying yes, we 
are quite as anxious that M. Nicolas should enjoy that of saying no; 
the unbeliever even has the right of contradicting us both. If it 
were not that critics are at liberty to assail religion, what would be 
the worth of apologetic writings ! The very interests of the truth, 
which for us is the Gospel, make us wish that persons may be free 
to attack it; it is in defending itself that truth will identify itself as 
such. With God on our side, we dread not the struggle, and M. Ni- 
colas supplies us with a good opportunity of proving so to him. 

In order to make out that Protestantism has been in France the 
persecuting party, M. Nicolas — clever man! — begins by grant- 



1. XicoUs, p. 448. 



254 



ing a concession. "Protestantism," says he, u has been first at- 
tacked, repulsed, persecuted, in this country (France) and , carried 
away by the deplorable excess of legitimate defence, the Catholic 
society was so exasperated against it, as to become its executioner, 
in order to avoid being its victim 1 ." 

We must bear in mind this concession : "Protestantism has been 
persecuted; and, carried away by a deplorable excess, Catholic so- 
ciety became its executioner," 

We could not have said more, but our inference would have been 
different; for it seems to us that the intolerant party is the one which 
persecutes even to the death ! 

But the point we would especially insist upon in this astonishing 
defence, is the motive alleged to justify the crime : viz., the fear of 
becoming a victim... What! is this your justice? You might 
happen to be killed, ergo you begin by murdering? At tbat rate, 
what crime could not be justifiable? Suppose a thief saying of the 
travellers whom he has assassinated : "I only wanted his purse ; 
but, lest he should send me to prison, I blew his brains out ! " Of 
course, it would be waste of time to dispute about such principles ; 
but we wish to show by what successive degrees M. Nicolas justifies 
the executioner and curses the victim. 

Here our author turns round, and by means of a quibble he en- 
deavours to put in his first accusation. The object is to establish 
that Protestantism has brought about in society the confusion of 
things temporal and things spiritual : ' ' Protestantism, by destroy- 
ing the authority of the Church, has destroyed spiritual authority 
in contradistinction to temporal power; that is to say, it has immo- 
lated the rights of thought and of conscience to human strength and 
human might 2 . " 

This "that is to say" is rather extraordinary; white, that is to 
say, black ; yes, that is to say, no ; the authority of the Church, i. e., 
the rights of thought : the authority of the Pope, i. e., the liberty 
of conscience. But, M. Nicolas, the Church, represented in your 
community by the clergy, is not identical with the thoughts of all 
human beings ! The Pope's authority is not identical with their 
conscience ! When the authority of a special body no longer exists, 
it is precisely then that the thoughts of all are free. I should have 
been ashamed to expose this blundering of yours in the very a, b, 
c, of a system, but 1 thought it right to prove how you consciously 
confound the authority of the Church, that is to say of one man — 

1. Nicolas, p. 449. — 2. Idem, p 4 450. 



255 



the Pope — with the rights of thought and of conscience : the 
rights of the whole human race. 

And, on the other hand, to whom can we trace this confusion of 
the temporal and the spiritual power? Is it to Luther or to Hilde- 
hrand? To him who only followed the errors of your church, or 
to those pontiff kings who wear a triple tiara, and distribute crowns, 
placing them on with the hand, and overturning them with the 
foot ? Who was it released a whole kingdom from its oath of fealty 
to the monarch ? Who was it sent a pretender to possess himself of 
the crown of the dethroned king ? Who was it changed a dynasty, 
and transformed a mayor of the palace into an usurping ruler, in 
order to make of the legitimate prince a cloistered monk ? Was it 
Luther? was it Calvin? or is this enough in your eyes to make a 
wise and profound distinction between things temporal and things 
spiritual ? 

We allow that during the sixteenth century our reformers, still 
imbued with your Roman ecclesiasticism, did not sufficiently resist 
those tendencies which induced princes to maintain state religions ; 
but, since the Reformation has followed its natural course, it is on 
its side, not on yours, that the powers are divided. 

Look at the United States, where the reciprocal independence of 
both powers is so complete, that no one single form of worship, 
not one single ecclesiastic, is supported by government; look at 
England, where half the Protestants are Dissenters, and actually 
struggle on behalf of the Catholics ; look at France, where Protes- 
tant chapels are increasing every day, and may be found wherever 
the national church exists ; look at Belgium, where the evange- 
lical communities had an opportunity of joining the State Church, 
but declined the faith. Of course, you can hold up to our view 
the national churches of England, Prussia, and Sweden: but you 
must acknowledge at the same time that these are only remains 
of Romanism, diminishing every day. Show us, if you can, a 
Roman Catholic church which would refuse an income from the 
government, as we have pointed out to you Protestant congrega- 
tions declining every yoke and every pay granted by the political 
Budget. Why, your own Irish fellow religionists have gladly re- 
ceived an endowment for Maynooth, for the National Board, and 
for some of their priests. Whenever she can, your Church unites 
herself with the secular power; she offers to political rulers her 
services, in return for their protection ; she even makes her own 
conditions as she formerly did in France. As soon as you can 
adduce a Roman Catholic congregation proclaiming itself a free 



230 

church like that of Scotland, or of the Canton de Vaud, then we 
shall begin to think that you desire a separation of the two powers, 
and that you have confidence in your cause. Until such an event 
comes to pass, allow us to say that Protestantism alone favours and 
realises liberty of conscience. 

Bat to proceed. After having accused Protestantism of bringing 
about the union between the temporal and the spiritual powers, 
M. Nicolas goes still farther, and says: " Protestantism began not 
by being persecuted, but by persecuting. I do not speak of what 
Protestantism has done since, but of what it did before its progress 
was stopped in France *. " 

In accordance with this affirmation, you will doubtless imagine 
that M. Nicolas is going to tell you of some grand massacre done by 
the Reformers, or of some Bartholomew's Day contrived by the Pro- 
testant party! No such thing. After having made a statement 
concerning the French Huguenots, he passes on, without transition, 
to Denmark, Norway, and Ireland. Further on, he quotes an au- 
thor who declares that the French Protestants were desirous of 
becoming stronger, in order to enjoy religious liberty in all its 
fullness; and that they assemble together for the purpose both 
of defending themselves and of assaulting others 2 . " 

Such, then, is the crime of the Protestants of France : They 
wished for "full religious liberty; they wished to defend themselves, 
and even to assault others ! " But where do you see persecution in 
this? Would you have been more pleased at seing them refuse 
religious freedom, and oppose no resistance to the attacks directed 
against them? 

Doubtless, we disapprove as much as you do the political position 
assumed by the French Protestants of that age, the fortified towns 
they insisted upon holding as a pledge for the execution of treaties, 
etc., etc. But you must allow that before coming to such a state of 
things they " had been first attacked, persecuted," by executioners 
"who dreaded to be their victims." According to your own avowal 
in p. 449, this is the best answer we can oppose to your accusation 
in p. 459. This answer is yours; this first was penned by yourself, 
M. Nicolas; and we would ask you how you reconcile these words , 
" The Protestants were first persecuted," with these : " Protest- 
antism in the first place was not persecuted?" Then, if as you say 
"you do not speak of what Protestantism has done since, " you 
thereby agree that the Protestants were persecuted neither first 



1. Nicolas, p. 359. — 2. Idem, pp. 460 and 461. 



257 



nor last. During the course of your persecutions they defended 
themselves. That is their crime. What the French Protestants 
required, previously to your attacks, previously to the resistance 
they were obliged to offer, was the liberty of worshipping God ac- 
cording to their conscience; and as, instead of allowing them to do 
so quietly, you deprived them of their goods, you threw them into 
prison, you banished them, you burned them at the stake, then, 
and not till then, their children had the boldness to escape from 
your bad treatment. Such is the extent of the persecution they con- 
trived ! And this is so true that you cannot quote a single instance 
where the French Protestants have persecuted the Catholics ! 

Now comes the question of the religious wars of the sixteenth 
century, the establishment of Protestantism in Germany, England, 
and elsewhere. Here the Catholics accuse the Protestants, and vice 
versa. We will not enter upon this interminable dispute, because 
we are speaking not of then, but of now ; in the sixteenth century 
the Reformation had not yet produced all its fruits ; the Protestant 
populations were still half Roman Catholic. In order to understand 
what Protestantism is now doing, we must study how it has acted 
upon the communities which it has been leavening for the last 
three hundred years ; we must study the states, the institutions, 
the men who are under our own eyes. This will be an easier task 
than the survey of the men, the institutions, and the slates that 
have vanished three centuries ago ! We will not return to this 
subject, but leave unnoticed the insults to which our reformers 
have been falsely exposed, though it would be a very easy matter 
for us to retort upon our adversaries ! 

As to the present time, besides, the only epoch of which we desire 
to speak, M. Nicolas admits that we are right. e( I do not examine/' 
says he, "what Protestantism has done since." Of course not; 
because you would be compelled to bear a favourable testimony. 

After having asserted, without either fact or proof, that Protest- 
antism is intolerant, M. Nicolas is about to prove Catholic tolera- 
tion, but his case appears so bad that he feels obliged, first of all, 
to apologise for certain peccadilloes, such for instance as Saint Bar- 
tholomew's Day : " It would be almost useless, " he says, " to 
assert that neither religion, nor the church have ever dictated or 
approved the crime of Saint Bartholomew's Day. And yet an insi- 
nuation such as this has been grounded upon the satisfaction with 
which the news was received at Rome, and upon the fact of the 
Tp Deum which Pope Gregory XIII ordered to be sung on the occa- 
sion The suppression of an impending conspiracy, the 

T. II. 17 



deliverance of the king and kingdom from the massacre to which 
this conspiracy would have led : such was the circumstance the 
Court of Rome intended to celebrate, and did celebrate. This sen- 
timent was surely, I will not say excusable but lawful; and yet, in 
the midst of the thanks it inspired, the features of one man appeared 
sorrowful, tears suffused his eyes; his lips, under the influence of 
tenderness and pity, ceased not to repeat these words, which the 
injustice of our adversaries has left us the honour of preserving 
and quoting : ( Who shall assure me that a great number of inno- 
cent people may not have perished ? } These paternal words, these 
paternal tears, were the words and the tears of Gregory XIII *. " 

To the Pope's words, to his tears, we will only oppose one fact— 
a medal struck by the same Pope. Gregory XIII, who wept for the 
innocent Huguenots, caused the words si The Massacre of the Hu- 
guenots, M to be engraved on brass ; and, as if to rectify this event, 
he had his own effigy placed at the back of the inscription. Do 
you doubt the existence of this medal? Here is a copy; the ori- 
ginal is in our possession; it will moreover be found reproduced in 
the work of the Jesuit Bonanni, printed at Rome at 1699, and de- 
posited in the Imperial Library at Paris. 




But an idea strikes us, wdiich may perhaps explain both the 
Pope's tears and his medal. The innocents whom Gregory XIII 
mourned for, were they not, perchance, some of the Roman Catho- 
lic executioners? Joy was for the slaughtered Huguenots, and 
the tears for their unfortunate executioners. The medal is there, 
at any rate; and it proves that the Pope did not mourn over those 
whom his elder son had slain. 

Now, as the Pope stands cleared of the crime perpetrated on 
St. Bartholomew's Day, the next thing w T as to acquit Bossuet, and 
even Louis XIV, of the Dragonnades and the persecutions. M. Ni- 
colas, therefore, makes us notice that, " thanks to the influence of 



i. Nicolas, pp. 465 and 466. 



the Bishop of Meaux, the king's message to the intendants and his 
letter to the bishops allowed the Protestants a free return in France, 
with restitution of their property to them, provided only they 
would consent io receive instruction. No compulsory period was 
assigned to them to state the result of the catechising they had 
received 1 ." 

Is it seriously that a man can write such things ? . . . . But 
let us examine the arguments he gives, and judge for ourselves. 

In the first place, if his Majesty condescended to recall the Pro- 
testants, it must have been because he had begun by expelling 
them. This does not prove the toleration of the Romish Church. 
We note, in the second place, that the Protestants are likewise led 
to hope for the restitution of their property ; this property must, 
consequently, have been taken away from them, and unjustly so ; 
for we have never heard of persons restoring back what they had 
a right to take. Never mind, however; such deeds are of no conse- 
quence when Protestants must be persecuted ! What we wish to 
insist upon here, in order to show the strength of M. Nicolas's argu- 
ments, is, the meekness displayed both by the king and by the 
bishop. They consent to allow a man's return, and to restore him 
to his property, provided he will consent to receive instruction for 
the purpose of becoming a Catholic. The time of his conversion is 
not fixed, certainly; but it must be some time or other; for you 
would not imply, would you, that the catechumen might remain 
such till the day of his death ! As well receive him uncondition- 
ally. We see, then, the extreme gentleness of Roman Catho- 
licism : we forgive you, provided you become one of our party ; 
you are at liberty to be instructed, provided your instruction infalli- 
bly ends in your acknowledging our infallibility. But this is 
downright mockery ; and we have not the courage to proceed. 

M. Nicolas at length designs to examine modern times, in order 
that he may make manifest the intolerance of Protestant coun- 
tries : " In most nations belonging to the Reformed faith, the 
Roman Catholics at the present day are still reduced to hope for 
an Edict of Nantes 2 . " 

A phrase like this will produce a certain effect upon a person 
who has not a clear idea of the edict in question, and who is 
perhaps in the dark as to the legislation of Protestant States nowa- 
days; but this effect speedily vanishes away when an attempt is 
made to dispel the obscurity which surrounds the whole point. 



1. Nicolas, pi 475. — S, Um, p. 480. 



260 



The Edict of Nantes may be summed up m a few words : liberty of 
religious worship, and restricted admission of the Protestants to the 
dispensing of civil and criminal justice, both rights being secured 
by guarantees. Are these important privileges refused, in our own 
days, to the Catholics of England, the United States, Prussia, Hol- 
land, Sweden, and Denmark? No; in all Protestant countries the 
Roman Catholics enjoy the liberty of worship. Everywhere they 
may fill not only magisterial but even political offices. To recall 
merely well-known facts, who does not know that O'Conneli was a 
member of the British Parliament? Who has forgotten that a 
Roman Catholic archbishop for a long time annoyed the Prussian 
Government on the subject of mixed marriages? Who has not 
lately read in the newspapers that a concordat now exists between 
the Pope and Holland ? Let our opponents name one Protestant 
country, a single one, in which the religious worship of the Roman 
Catholics is impeded as that of the Protestant is at Rome, Naples, 
Florence, Milan, Madrid, Lisbon — where the law forbids their 
discharging any civic f unctions ; then we shall acknowledge our- 
selves to be defeated. But, as long as we are taunted merely with 
statements unsupported by either proofs or facts, we must beg leave 
to adhere to our own opinion. 

Since M. Nicolas here enters upon the question of religious li- 
berty, which did not properly belong to the design of this work, we 
shall answer him by giving a statistical account of this liberty 
throughout all the nations of Europe, both Protestant and Roman 
Catholic : the sketch we are about to quote, recently drawn up and 
admirably executed, will show at last on what side religious liberty 
is to be found. 

The author of this paper — our extract must be an abridged one 

— attempts to compare from the stand -point of toleration the 
Roman Catholic and the Protestant countries. He begins by a 
review of the former, as follows : 

" Since, then, the convulsions of Europe belong to the history of 
politics, the struggle of the spirit of tolerance has become one of 
opinion and moral force. The idea re-discovered in the Reformation 

— the right to think and to differ — gradually spreads, and pene- 
trates through the bigotry of the most despotic states, despite the 
vain efforts of tyrants to prevent the free development of thought. 
The great landmarks have remained ; changes have been wrought, 
but imperceptibly, not by striking epochs. Protestantism no longer 
struggles for life, and therefore more calmly diffuses its principles, 
and improves its example. In nearly every country we may trace 



2G4 

some progress towards liberality, yet we cannot but be surprised 
bow so much stagnation should have been preserved in so many 
states, amid the downfall of ancient theories, the change, the tu- 
mult, and collision of modern ideas. 

ee It is a hopeful prospect for the rest of Europe to look on Belgium, 
with its richly cultured plains, its populous cities, and thriving ma- 
nufactures, and see that the elements of progress and liberality are 
attainable in a Roman Catholic country. It is, however, an in- 
stance that their rulers are not likely to originate these new modes 
of thought, aud that such must be in a manner forced upon their 
acceptance. We should not forget that Belgium was for ages under 
the rule of a Protestant government, and of one which employed its 
ascendant power but to confer a perfect religious equality on the 
less powerful sect. The Belgians were Roman Catholics, but the 
Netherlands were Protestant ; and perhaps no more striking proof 
of the leniency of their rule can be adduced, than that the Pope 
condescended to make a concordat with the Protestant William I 
in 1827, and that the latter made such concessions as satisfied his 
Holiness. The constitution was thus established, the laws framed 
— nay, even the concordat with the Pope ready made — and when 
the Revolution of 1830 tore the kingdom into two separate states, 
Belgium had not the credit of devising a new system; it but conti- 
nued in a separate form that which it had enjoyed while united 
with Holland. Perhaps, therefore, we should rather set down its 
liberality to the credit of Protestantism, which was undoubtedly 
its creating cause, or at least to the popular generosity, which ac- 
cepted and prolonged its results. Indeed, the only efforts of their 
clergy since then have uniformly been to restore the reign of into- 
lerance ; and here, as in every other part of the world, they have 
put forward the most arrogant claims to the exclusive control of the 
public education l . With all its backsliding, would that the rest of 
Europe could learn the same lessons as Belgium, and in a similar 
school ! 

" Of France we need not say much; it is ever in a transition state, 
never permanent ; our criticism may be that of a by-gone era ere it 
meet the public eye. Under the semblance of universal toleration, 
in the frenzy of democratic equality, its first revolution annihilated 
all religion, and refused to tolerate any. The restoration of any 
one could hardly, after this, be exclusive, though we fear indiffer- 

1. See the public letter of the Archbishop of Malines to his clergy, in November 1851, de- 
siring them not to celebrate masses for any colleges or ..schools " not under the authority or 
control of the local priest \ " 



262 



ence ov atheism had more to do with such liberality than enlarged 
views or nobler sentiments of charity. France has now, however, 
on more rational grounds, confirmed that tolerance, and is there- 
fore entitled still to rank as a tolerant nation ; though its descent to 
a very opposite system seems likely to be as rapid as has been its 
progress to despotism. The political influence of the clergy was 
bargained for; the clergy bought the imperial recognition of 
their religion. They have kept their part of the contract, aDd have 
helped to establish imperial authority. Who can limit the re- 
turn they may now exact ? It will require great concessions to 
atone for the flattery they did their conscience the violence of listen- 
ing to without rebuke, for the profane addresses they did not 
oppose, for the episcopal benedictions bestowed upon this great 
( man of God 1 . ' Accordingly, without any repeal of fundamen- 
tal laws, we already find Protestantism effectually discouraged, its 
publications prohibited, and its schools, under various pretexts, suc- 
cessively suppressed — results that flow from the ascendancy of the 
ultramontane clergy, but that are combated by those Roman Ca- 
tholics, who remember that their forefathers manfully shook off the 
papal yoke, without abandoning their creed, in the famous declara- 
tion of the f Gallican liberties. 3 Never, perhaps, was the struggle 
more fiercely carried on in the bosom of the church than at this 
very moment. 

"Not dissimilar is the story of Austria. For ages the centre of 
despotism and persecution, the whole fabric of its ancient policy 
was torn down by the sudden violence of a popular outburst, and 
the imperial dynasty was only saved, amid the convulsions of 1848, 
by a timely abdication, with the pledge of a free constitution at the 
hands of their young monarch. The constitution of 18i9, accor- 
dingly, promised much, and has accomplished nothing. It stifled 
the popular movement for redress of grievances, and gave the Em- 
peror power to gradually nullify its provisions, and finally, despite 
his solemn pledge to uphold it, to formally repeal it by his ipse 
dixit-. One of its advances in liberality had been to permit the 
public profession of the Protestant, as w r ell as of the established 
faith, though the same liberty was not conceded to any other forms 

1. See, amongst others, the Bishop of Chalons' address to his clergy, in September last, "May 
he he blessed, this man of God, this great man, for it is God who has raised him up for the 
happiness of our country, to cure all the wounds which sixty years of revolutions had inflicted! 
Once more may he be blessed. " This may be simple hyperbole, but the address presented in 
the department of the Uerault was an outrage on religious feeling that should have been sternly 
rebuked by any who professed to be the" ministers of religion. — 2. The constitution of 
March, 1849, was formally annulled bv a series of Imperial decrees published on the 1st of 
januarv, 1852. 



203 



of belief. These concessions are supposed still to remain, but they 
may be swept away any hour by the same breath that annihilated 
the hopes of political freedom. Meanwhile,, toleration exists nomi- 
nally, but little more than nominally. All religious meetings re- 
quire the sanction of the police, and those who know how effec- 
tually, by petty delays and difficulties, they can prevent anything 
they do not wish, without appearing to prohibit it, will see that 
laws are of very little consequence. The executive is everything; 
it makes the laws, and enforces them as it pleases. Jn inquiring into 
the condition of such a state, therefore, we should ask, not what 
is the constitutional statute, but what is the private feeling of him 
who makes and unmakes statutes and constitutions. That this is 
rapidly reactionary is plain enough.' The formal restraints on the 
publication of papal bulls, adhered to with strict firmness, as a ne- 
cessary safeguard to themselves by other Roman Catholic States, 
have been abandoned; those who presumed to publish or propagate 
the Bible have been banished at the instigation of the clergy; the 
haughty demands of the episcopal assembly have been acquiesced 
in. 'The Catholic Church can never, and nowhere, renounce her 
claim upon the exercise of a decisive influence on religious instruc- 
tion;' and again, in reference to the popular schools 1 , ' the Ca- 
tholic Church does not claim the right to the religious instruction 
of the Catholic youth alone, she is appointed by God to educate 
mankind for eternal life. } True, there is still the possibility of 
other schools, but their certificates of education are valueless in a 
country where, without such certificates, no promotion or occupa- 
tion is permitted, Though, therefore, we now charitably class the 
Austrian Government among those that profess to be tolerant «- 
even the affectation of virtue is a homage to its merit — but a 
little further progress in its present direction will suffice to change 
the verdict. 

e( A moment we may pause in Bavakia, ere we bid adieu to the 
fairer specimens of Roman Catholic liberality. Here we find the 
same extent of religious freedom that pervades the rest of Germany. 
Surrounded by free Protestant states, and, like many of these mi- 
nor principalities, very roughly treated in the convulsions of Eu- 
rope — their kings bundled in and out, and their territories sliced, 
to suit the public convenience — it would be strange, indeed, if it 
alone had opposed the current of feeling in the grand confederation 
of which it is a part, Still it has a right to its distinct laws, and to 

1. See the report drawn up by Count Ttuin, the Minister of Public Worship and Education, 
Ayril 13 Hi, 1850, and approved by the Emperor, 



204 



its own expression of opinion,, and must receive its due merit for 
having adopted the religious freedom of its neighbours 1 . 

^The scene now changes, and we commence the dreary catalogue 
of intolerance. Nor yet shall we plunge at once into its thickest 
darkness, hut accustom our eyes to the gathering gloom by the 
least startling transition we can find. In Portugal, men can now 
think as they please, provided they do not dare to speak lightly of 
Roman Catholic dogmas, or to impugn their truth, and, at least, 
they are no longer dragged before the terrible inquisition; nay, 
they may worship God as they think right, if they take care to do 
so at home, and not to offend the public eye by allowing it to ob- 
serve their rebellious deviations from established orthodoxy. This, 
too, is something by comparison, as we shall see anon, though, 
despite of this concession, we must set down Portugal in the list of 
intolerants; it cannot stand the simple test — public worship is 
prohibited, the public expression of opinion is criminal. 

u About Spain there is no doubt. But one religion is professed, 
and none other is permitted in any shape. To be a Spaniard, 
implies necessarily lo be a Roman Catholic. He who dares to 
forsake that faith is banished by law, lest the poison of his heresy 
should spread contagion ; while those who may have tempted him 
from his faith are liable to the mild punishment of five or seven 
years' imprisonment. Hitherto, the mere traveller or foreigner 
was looked on as a necessary exception, as a passing evil that could 
not be avoided; now, by the decree of November 17, 1852, he 
must bury his thoughts within his bosom, and give no evidence of 
his dissent; he is no longer permitted to £ profess any but the 
Catholic religion. ' It is true that diplomacy, with its dexterous 
mystery, has stated that this will not affect English travellers, but 
it is a plain outrage on all notions of national honour or generosity, 
and, even if not enforced, it will be but a symptom of our strength 
and of Spain's weakness. Thus, he who has most freedom there, 
the English stranger, must, while living, hide his creed, and when 
dead he must be satisfied to have his corpse hurried obscurely to 
the cemetery which treaty alone has secured for him ; but if he 
would have the prayer or forms of his religion to hallow his tomb, 
his friends must choose some secret hour or opportunity, when 
the crime of performing such a service will be connived at, 
because of its secrecy ! We shall see much more savage intolerance 

1. Bohemia is not entitled to be considered as a separate kingdom, at least for the purposes 
of our present argument. It is so completely incorporated with Austria, as to be incapable of 
forming a separate or independent opinion. Its decision on the subject of tolerance is not .its 
own, and only follows the dictates of its imperial master at Vienna. 



265 



elsewhere, but very little so despicable and so ungenerous as 
this. 

" And now we have reached the mighty Alps — the barrier that 
has so often turned back the tide of papal usurpation, and separated 
ultramontane arrogance from the struggle long waged by Roman 
Catholics themselves against complete mental slavery ; and now 
we look down on the rich plains of Italy — beautiful , unfortunate, 
and degraded! Let us descend into Sardinia, where the new- 
born aspirations for freedom threaten to shake the peninsula by 
the presence of an idea so novel and so formidable. But the 
movement towards freedom must not be mistaken for its accom- 
plishment. Public feeling is here allowed to find expression in 
the press, and thus controls the operation of unjust laws; the execu- 
tive abhors the principles of enactments, which yet it has not had 
the courage to repeal ; it is a mistake to suppose that toleration is 
yet the rule — it is the exception to the constitution; they chafe 
under the yoke, but have not yet flung it off. ' Sono schiavi, ma 
schiavi ognor frementi!' 

" The despatch from the Chevalier Azeglio to Sir R. Abercrombie, 
of Sept. 30, 1851, perhaps fairly states the present transition state 
of the laws. The Vaudois Protestants have been allowed to build 
a church in Turin, but the intolerant laws with reference to these 
subjects of the state ' have not been expressly abolished. ' He 
intimates an opinion that other Protestants would be allowed to 
perform their worship, 6 if it did not take place with such external 
circumstances as should offend the Catholic faith, ' in other words, 
if it were private and unobserved. In exact accordance with this 
view is the conduct of the government. In the recent prosecutions 
for heresy, the victims 1 were saved, not by the laws of the country, 
or its judicial decision, but by the Minister of Justice extending to 
them the royal pardon, for what he admitted to be still a legal 
crime. The general opinion of the liberality of Sardinia is drawn 
from the expression of public feeling that wrung this and similar 
concessions from the laws, and that replaced the Professor Nuytz 
in his professor's chair, when condemned by a papal bull, 2 for 
questioning the most objectionable dogmas of the pontifical canons; 
but the laws still provide that, ' in accordance with the sacred 
canons, ' the secular aid should be ever extended to execute the 
ecclesiastical sentence ; that in cases of e suspicion of heresy and 
blasphemy ' — and we know that reading the Word of God some- 

1. One of these, however, Mazzinghi, was first pardoned, and then banished. — 2. This was 
in December, 1851, The Sardinian minister protested against the reception of this bull. 



m 

times falls under this definition — the civil power should give 
exclusive jurisdiction to the ecclesiastical; that this latter should, 
indeed, have its own ministers for enforcing its proceedings, but 
that, the sentence once pronounced, the culprit should be handed 
to the State, to inflict the sentence their Christian mercy has award- 
ed. Such, it should be noted, has ever been the system, except 
in the case of the Inquisition, which scoffed at pity or decency, and 
outraged every feeling of humanity; bigotry has always had the 
tact to make the state its executioner. Of old, it organised a war 
of extermination, or sent forth a holy military order; in later days, 
it never wields the sword or the axe, but it often brings those who 
incur its anger to suffer under the arm of the civil law the chastise- 
ment it cannot itself administer. The same effect is produced, 
and the odium falls on the despotism, rather than on its cause. 
Yet, with all its failings, its yet undeveloped hopes, would that 
we had more countries as promising as Sardinia. 

" Tuscany and Nafles have been so oft discussed and exposed of 
late, that we need not expose them again. The one is notorious, 
and the other despicable in its intolerance. Tuscany we may 
shortly describe, in the words of a despatch of its minister 1 
' the canon law forms a part of its legislative code ! * What more 
can w r e add? It is true the Leopoldine law of 4782 abolished the 
Inquisition, as they would an acknowledged bore or a public nui- 
sance, but they did little more. Nor let it be imagined, as has 
been ignorantly put forward in the House of Commons 3 , that these 
laws were framed in a spirit of hostility to the Roman Catholic 
Church; they cannot possibly be so considered, unless the speakers, 
who made this crude assertion, choose to identify their Church 
with the maintenance of the Inquisition. It was against this 
latter alone that they were aimed, and they certainly left ample 
powers of persecution to satisfy the most intolerant 3 , n 

1, Despatch from the Duke of Carigliano to the Hon. r. C. Scarlett, September 25, 1851, In 
this he takes care to point out that the privileges granted 44 to enrich the commerce of the town 
of Leghorn," as well as the narrow connivance at the service of their rich English visitors, 
should he considered as distinct " exceptional cases, " and not as any deviation in principle 
from the established rule, — 2. See debate of February 17. — 3, The last rule is worth record- 
ing. " That the usurped right of taking cognisance in causes of religious faith be hencefor- 
ward restored to the various bishops ; and that the proceedings in such causes shall in no way 
differ from those of right, observed in every other ecclesiastical criminal cause. 

14 We will, and do trust, that the bishops will voluntarily make it a law, to have present in 
their minds, that the publicity of a trial and condemnation often produces greater scandal than 
even the transitory error it is intended to correct; that the admonitions, exhortations, and every 
thing which charity, such as it is incumbent on them to profess for an example to others can 
suggest, tend far more effectually to correct the guilty, and edify the rest; but that whenever 
the circumstances of the case shall be such as to demand rigour and the assistance of the secular 
arm — provided always it be proved to us that the adoption of the abovementioned means have 

not Succeeded — we shall think it our duty to grant it. " 

Despite this little lecture on <4 charity, " there seems here very slight appearance of the aboli- 
tion of coercion. 



267 



" The mild spirit of Leopold for some time animated the admi- 
nistration, but that, too, has perished, and his laws have been abo- 
lished. The last two years attest the change and prove its severity. 
The journals have furnished a catalogue of martyrs of oppression ; 
need we recal the names of the Count Guicciardini and his six com- 
panions, or of Savi, Byche, Madiai and his wife; Manelli, Fantoni, 
Pasquale, Casacci, and more recently Guarducci? Some have 
been fortunate enough to escape with banishment; others have 
been consigned to the living tomb of an Italian dungeon. Those 
who have seen their horrors could well imagine a brave man being 
less daunted by the quick and sharp penalty of death, than by so 
lingering and revolting a doom. 

" It is in vain to palliate these cases by seeking to give them a po- 
litical aspect, or by calling them civil offences ! They are only one 
or the other, in so far as ecclesiastical censures consign them to the 
' rigour of the secular arm. ' We have only to read the officially 
published acts of accusation and conviction to see that it is for reli- 
gious belief, exercised and discussed only within their own houses, 
that they now suffer. It is for this reason that the British public 
selected the Madiai case for the expression of their indignant sym- 
pathy. Many others occur from time to time, but they are usually 
complicated with circumstances that create a difficulty in separating 
political punishment from religious persecution. It would be 
unbecoming in us to interfere if the government of a foreign state 
were to tell us that the accused was arraigned for an offence nowise 
connected with his religious belief. Here, fortunately, the Tuscan 
executive has removed all such scruples of delicacy, by placing us 
in possession of its official details. It was a plain, avowed case of 
religious persecution, and none seek to fritter away this obvious 
conclusion, who do not make us at heart suspect their sympathy 
with such intolerance when exerted against their opponents. 
Indeed the termination proves the conscious guilt of their persecu- 
tors. Had there been any defensible grounds for vindicating the 
punishment, they would never have released them; but they 
tardily yielded to the overwhelming cry of shame, smuggled forth 
their victims from the dungeon, and hurried them from their 
dominions, reft of all but life. 

•* And Naples, too, with its glorious forms of nature's beauty, 
and its ever-smoking volcano — symbol of the earthquake that 
lurks beneath the now still peninsula — Naples has, in days of yore, 
coped with the haughty pontiffs of Rome, rejected the greater 
portion of the decrees of the famed Council of Trent, and proudly 



263 



trampled upon papal bulls. Those days are gone; and now its 
government, at once imbecile and violent, bigoted and profligate, 
lends the swords of its venal army to wreak on its own citizens the 
bidding of Rome. Tts people violate every precept of morality, 
and observe every ceremonial of religion. Ignorant of the meaning 
of freedom, they possess it not themselves — they seek not to accord 
it to others. They are, indeed, steeped in the servitude of intole- 
rance, without alleviation and without hope. 

" Thus have we at length penetrated to the great centre of Roman 
Catholic teaching, and next find ourselves in Rome ; before us the 
majestic temple of the tutelary Apostle : on the right the pomp of 
the Vatican; on the left the palace of the Inquisition. The emblem 
of heaven's religion, the pride of earthly power, and the monu- 
ment of man's unhallowed passions, are thus strangely grouped 
together. If others have admitted unjustifiable papal claims — if 
other countries have harboured the Inquisition, or sanctioned the 
canon law, it was from here that the haughty thunders were 
launched — here was the organisation framed, and here grew that 
unscrupulous code. Others may faintly deny the imputation — 
may admit part, and explain away more; here there is no evasion; 
the canon law is proclaimed an inwrought portion of the constitu- 
tion . 

Intolerance reigns supreme. Here it had its birth, and here it 
has made its throne. 

" Rome, unfortunately, prides itself on its immutability in doc- 
trine, and is prone to apply it to what it was never meant to refer; 
and thus, in its temporal claims and temporal rules, it only means 
obstinate adherence to error, and an incapacity to adopt improve- 
ment. The Vatican fulminates at once against the unfortunate 
professor at Turin. Does Spain relapse into the intolerance of 
by-gone centuries? The Pope, in a studied allocution, congratu- 
lates Christendom on so glorious an advance in its Christianity. 
Across the Atlantic, the state of New Granada sets a noble example 
in conceding what, for the ideas of these regions, was an unwonted 
freedom in education, in the press, and in the exercise of religion. 
Another allocution, not yet six months' old, condemns such fearful 
approaches to hated liberty, and it is denounced as c a horrible and 
sacrilegious war against the Catholic Church. ' But the remedy is 
at hand. No subjects should obey the state when it displeases the 
Church, and therefore they are stimulated to a holy rebellion 
against their rulers. ' We, raising with apostolic liberty our pas- 
toral voice, do censure, condemn, and declare utterly null and void 



all the aforesaid decrees, which have been there enacted by the 
civil power. ' 

" But we must not forget that civilisation claims another quarter 
of the globe. The story of American tolerance is briefly told. New 
Granada we have just mentioned as having excited the papal 
indignation, and, therefore, we may safely class it as tolerant, or 
meaning to be so, though its efforts are, perhaps, very much below 
what would entitle it to the name in Europe. The same glory we 
willingly give to the unostentatious republic of Venezuela. The 
remaining Roman Catholic states we may group together into those 
that are intolerant, and those that are so exclusively intolerant as 
not only to prohibit the public worship, but even the private pro- 
fession of any but the one religion. In the former we may place 
Buenos Ayres, and the federal republic of Central America, 
since 1832 1 ; and in the latter we may class Bolivia, Chili, Equador, 
Mexico, Peru, and Uruquay. All these vast tracts were once the 
seats of European greatness across the Atlantic ; now they have 
sunk into stagnant decrepitude, beside the wondrous growth of the 
mighty nations that have been raised by the Saxon and the Celt ; 
the spirit of freedom has prospered, while bigotry and servitude 
have wrought decay. 

" Call this, then, tolerance, and what is the general result? Out 
of twenty-two Roman Catholic states, there are just seven tolerant, 
or less than one-third. But what is still more striking is, that out of 
the fifteen intolerant, there are no less than ten that are absolutely 
and exclusively so. This is the most remarkable feature, as we 
shall see when we institute a like examination into the Protestant 
states of the world. 

*' Our induction, however, would be but half complete were we 
to pause here; we must finish our panoramic view by glancing 
also at the position of intolerance in Protestant countries. 

" We shall commence with Sweden and Norway, which have of 
late been much cited as a triumphant answer to the claims Protes- 
tanlism puts forward of being the ally of toleration . How far its ex- 
ceptional case alters the general argument, we shall not see till we 
come to cast up results ; meanwhile we shall not spare its violations 
of Protestant principles, though we shall also do what has not yet 
been fairly done — place the actual facts, the real extent of its delin- 
quency, before the public. Of Norway we may very briefly dispose, 

1. Until 1832 it was exclusively intolerant. It now consists of five states, united under one 
federal government, bat differing somewhat in laws as well as in their degrees of intolerance. 
Our judgment may be taken as a fair average. 



270 



as it is now tinder precisely (he same Jaws, in this respect, as Swe- 
den. Formally united to it in 1814, it for long retained its own 
constitution, and the complete absence of any dissentient religious 
sect left legislation on the subject a matter of unimportance. Even 
now there are scarcely 500 who are not members of the Established 
Church. When attention was at length called to the subject, a re- 
solution of March 6, 1843, gave liberty to Roman Catholics to esta- 
blish a church, and perform public worship ; and this edict was 
confirmed, and made general for the benefit of all dissenters, on the 
16th of July, 1845. 

(( Now, we have no wish to palliate such narrow bigotry as still 
lingers in these Scandinavian regions; but it is fair to know pre- 
cisely what should be the extent of our condemnation. It has been 
asserted, that this is a parallel case for Spain, Tuscany, or Rome. 
A moment's examination will show that it does not, in the slightest 
degree, approach their exclusive intolerance, nor even that of other 
countries, such as Portugal, which have made comparative advances 
in liberality. The laws still in operation were promulgated on the 
24th of January, 1781, by Gustavus III, and profess to establish 
( a free and unconstrained exercise of religion, and a perfect liberty 
of conscience. 3 Even this declaration, however imperfectly carried 
out in practice, is a tribute to the truth of the general principle, 
and at once distinguishes the state that professes it from those that 
explicitly repudiate it. The acknowledgment of what is right is 
the first step, and a necessary condition to its practice. 

" We find that there is perfect freedom to each one to continue in 
his own religious opinions ; full liberty to construct as many churches 
as may be required, to appoint and maintain proper ecclesiastics, to 
perform every act of public worship within the appropriated pre- 
cincts, but avoiding public processions in the streets (ceremonies that 
cannot be said to be a necessary part of their ritual, and that might 
naturally lead to angry collisions with the majority) the right of 
endowing schools for the instruction of their members in their own 
religion, and of sending teachers for the same purpose where no 
schools exist. No one of the dominant religion is permitted to 
ridicule the Roman Catholic doctrines, under a penalty of from ten 
to fifty dollars, and any one who interrupts their service is liable 
to a fine of twenty-fi ve dollars. No Lutheran clergyman is allowed, 
under severe penalties, to intrude on any but his own flock, or to 
force his services where not required. 

" The plain, insur mo untable charge against Sweden is, that it will 
allow no man to change his religion, except for Sthat of the ate; 



To no other will it permit any efforts to spread its tenets. No Lu- 
theran can attend any service but his own, without being subject to 
a fine of ten dollars ; those who attempt his conversion are fineable 
to the extent of 100 dollars, and should their efforts be successful, 
he is subject to banishment, or confiscation of his property. 

" Having said thus much, we have said all, and unhesitatingly 
denounce so timid, narrow, and un-Protestant a policy. It will, 
however, at once be plain, that this forms no set-off to the darkness 
of Italy; in contrast with it, it is actually light. Can Italian Pro- 
testants establish public churches, endow schools or clergy for 
teaching their children the Bible? or are their opinions protected 
from insult or oppression? This one question shatters at once 
the fancied parallel. 

u And now our task is nearly done. We have visited Protestant 
Sweden with a severity that Roman Catholic Austria could not 
have stood, had we applied as severe a test ; henceforth we shall 
have little more than to complete our catalogue, marking, perhaps, 
any striking differences in the degree of toleration afforded, but 
finding none that do not more than satisfy our definition. 

" As the most antiquated and the least progressive, we may 
commence with Denmark. Here it is only of late years that the 
universal exercise of religion has been made a fundamental law; 
previously the Roman Catholics (who, however, number but 2,500) 
had been restricted in their places of worship ; at present, they 
possess all they are able to maintain in Copenhagen, Fredericia, 
Frederichstadt, Altona, and Kiel. 

" The Netherlands may be briefly and satisfactorily dismissed. 
Leo XII condescended to the very unusual course of making a con- 
cordat with the Protestant King, William I 1 , for the government 
of the Roman Catholic Church. This is a very unusual proceeding 
with a heretic prince, and argues the belief of the Vatican, that it 
had to deal with a government of no ordinary liberality. The in- 
ternuncio at the Hague is also head of the Papal Church in Holland, 
and as such receives a pension from the state. It has even been 
formally announced, that it is the intention of the Vatican to esta- 
blish an organised Roman Catholic hierarchy there; perhaps to 
prove to the world that Holland is on the point of being converted, 
but with about as much truth as if a sudden importation of coffins 
were to be made, to persuade the sturdy inhabitants that they 
were all inevitably dead men. 



1. See the correspondence in Tabtet, of Jane 48, 1827, with the Protestant Alliance. 



" We may take our testimony in favour of Prussia from 
the papal bull of August, 1822, known as Be Salute, which 
regulates the Roman Catholic Church. We shall only add, 
that the correspondence of religious communities with Rome 
had been then subjected to the state regulations lhat are 
ordinarily imposed in Roman Catholic countries, and to no 
other, and that even these have been removed by an article 
in the constitution of January, 1850. The followers of the Pope 
can hardly complain, when he is compelled formally to announce, 
as the result of his ' efforts to preserve the Catholic faith' — 
' Our wishes in this respect have been greatly seconded by the 
aforesaid King of Prussia, whom we have found, and gratefully 
acknowledge, to be animated by the most benevolent wishes towards 
his very numerous Catholic subjects; so that at length we are 
able to bring everything to a happy and prosperous conclusion, and 
we can constitute the churches anew, and divide the dioceses, and 
provide all places that require it with their own fit and worthy 
pastors. ' 

cc Hanover we cannot pass without noticing a curious incident in 
its dealing with the papal hierarchy within its realm. These are 
regulated by a bull, issued March 26, 1824, which divided this 
country, where they could have but one-ninth of the population 
under their spiritual direction, into episcopal dioceses, with much 
the same sang-froid with which England was recently similarly 
parcelled out. To this bull our own sovereign, then also King of 
Hanover, gave his royal sanction ; but we should add, that his sanc- 
tion was sued for before the bull was published. 

" The kingdoms of Witrtemberg and Saxony are the only other 
states of the German Confederation that we mention apart from the 
whole of Germany. In both nearly equally complete toleration 
exists. In the former, where education is very much advanced 
and very generally diffused, the striking feature is the number of 
Roman Catholic schools. In the latter the reigning family is Ro- 
man Catholic, although there are not 30,000 of that persuasion out 
of a population of more than 1,600,000. Both, however, are on an 
equal footing, not only as to religious but as to civil rights, 
both have members in the Diet. It is true there are limitations as 
to conversions from one religion to another, but these are perfectly 
mutual, and are adopted by both — whether wisely or not — as 
safeguards against fraud, not as restraints upon convictions J . Thus, 



1. These are prescribed by a mandate of Frederick Augustus, dated January 20, 1827. 



after the age of twenty-one, no one can be prevented from chang- 
ing his religion; he must, however, give notice to the clergyman of 
the persuasion to which he has hitherto belonged, and must con- 
tinue four weeks before taking the final formal step. All improper 
inducements to proselytism, whether by bribes or intimidation, 
are severely punishable. 

" Of what remains of Germany — that great centre of the intellec- 
tual activity of Europe — after deducting those greater kingdoms 
which are entitled to the dignity of a separate consideration, we 
still find no less than twenty-four independent states, each preserv- 
ing its own internal laws, though portions of the one great federal 
alliance. In each of these it is competent to differ from its neigh- 
bours by enacting intolerant laws, and, therefore, the decision of 
each is a distinct expression of opinion. 

" It is not our object to swell the number of Protestant tolerant 
states, by counting these per capita, as no less than twenty-two are 
Protestant, and but two are Roman Catholic ; but it would be 
equally unreasonable to omit the aggregate as a unit, when it repre- 
sents more than six millions of men, and conveys their decision all 
the more forcibly that it has been taken in detail. The degree of 
toleration differs in particulars, especially in the amount of civil 
privileges accorded to the minority ; but in none is there any im- 
pediment to the free exercise of any form of the Christian religion. 
In Baden, where, strange to say, there is a much larger proportion 
of Roman Catholics than in any other state, there are some singular 
regulations as to convents. None are allowed to take the monastic 
vows for more than seven years; and a government inspector, at 
the appointed time, presents himself to each i mm ate, and proffers 
the means of escape, should any be so inclined. Doubtless, the 
power of obtaining freedom often checks the longing that would 
spring up within the bosom, were it hopelessly lost for ever; and, 
at the same time, it must insure a management in harmony with 
the wishes of the immates. In some other states no new convents 
are allowed to be established ; but it does not appear that there is 
any occasion for more than those that exist at present. Their 
ideas have not, in many respects, expanded to our latitudinarian- 
ism; but they seem to distinguish, not unreasonably, between 
allowing the essentials of a religion, and encouraging its ornaments 
or luxuries. There is also a general notion, that, as man is not to 
be suffered to voluntarily take away his own life, so he is not to 
be permitted to vow away his liberty; or, at least, the step should 
not be irrevocable — there should be left some locus penUentice. 
t.ii. 18 



274 



" Switzerland —the cradie of the Refo Filiation, and the champion 
of freedom — is not without peculiarities. The general federal 
government has formed no regulations as to religion ; each canton 
acts independently. Out of its twenty-two cantons, there are hut 
seven Roman Catholic, and about four-fifths of the population are 
of the Reformed faith. All, however, adopted the same principles, 
and did not sutler religious opinions to be made any ground of dis- 
qualification. Thus they lived in harmony till about 4830, when 
a series of political revolutions commenced, that led to a perma- 
nent conflict of religious interests. To the intrigues of the Jesuits, 
who sought to abuse the liberty accorded them, by obtaining an 
exclusive and ascendant power, these internal dissensions were 
attributed. We cannot pause to discuss how far they were its sole 
cause; but, unquestionably, they exasperated differences, and flung 
themselves into the turmoil of political agitation. This led to a 
retaliation by the Protestant cantons, carried to an undue excess 
— as all popular retaliations are — and the Jesuits were expelled 
by force, as the causa teterrima belli. It should, however, be ob- 
served, that these acts had their origin in political causes, and not 
in any intolerant laws * and it should be remembered, that there is 
no Roman Catholic country that has not, at some time, been com- 
pelled to adopt the same course towards these too-active politico- 
ecclesiastics. Even conceding the injustice of individual acts, it is 
impossible to deny the perfect freedom that is allowed to the ordi- 
nary exercise of every Christian religion in Switzerland. An esta- 
blishment of Jesuits can hardly be called an essential to any, after 
the solemn declaration of a Pope to the contrary l ; 

"For a moment we must cross the Atlantic, to dismiss almost in 

1. It is so common to confound the Jesuits with Roman Catholicism itself, that it is well to 
advert to an often-quoted document that proves the contrary— we mean the Brief of Clement XIV., 
July 21, 1783. Speaking of his predecessors' efforts to control the turbulence of the Jesuits, 
he says : — " In vain did they endeavour to restore peace to the Church, as well with regard 
to secular affairs, with which the company ought not to have interfered, as with regard to the 
missions which gave rise to great disputes on the part of the company with the ordinaries, with 
other religious orders, about holy places and communities of all sorts in Europe, Africa , and 
America, to the great loss of souls, and scandal of the people ; as likewise concerning the 
practice of certain idolatrous ceremonies adopted in certain places, in contempt of those ap- 
proved by the Catholic Church ; and further, concerning the use of certain maxims, which the 
Holy See has, with reason, proscribed as scandalous, and manifestly contrary to good morals. . . 
Complaints and quarrels were multiplied on every side ; in some places dangerous seditions arose, 
tumults, discords, scandals, which, entirely breaking the bonds of Christian charity, excited the 
faithful to all the rage of party hatreds and enmities. Desolation and danger grew to such a 
height, that the very sovereigns, whose piety and liberality towards the company were so well 
known as to be looked upon as hereditary— we mean our dearly beloved sons in Christ, the 
Kings of France, Spain, Vortugai, and Sicily — found themselves reduced to the necessity of ex- 
celling from their states these very companions of Jesus, persuaded that this step was neces- 
sary to prevent Christians from rising against one another, and from massacring each other 
in the very bosom of our common mother, the Holy Church." As he appropriately concludes by 
abolishing and suppressing the order, we may infer that a state may amply tolerate Roman 
Catholics, and yet expel the Jesuits. 



275 

a sentence the mighty nation that overspreads the western world, 
the United States. Neither the federal government, nor any of 
the individual states, permit any laws either for the encourage- 
ment or the suppression of any particular form of religion. - They 
have cut the gordian knot of legislative difficulty, rather than ar- 
rived at its philosophical solution. It is not for us here to discuss 
how far a nation can abjure all national character or responsibility, 
and become purely a political association; it is enough to notice 
the fact that such is there the case. We need here only remark 
that the states must, undoubtedly, be classed amongst the Protest- 
ant countries. It derived the foundation of its laws from Eng- 
land ; from thence it drew its spirit of freedom, and its religion it 
still retains. In a country whose growth is so rapid, it is not easy 
to be precise ; its population changes day by day; but we may safely 
assume the Roman Catholics as not more than one-eighth of the 
entire 1 . 

" Were we anxious to swell an already overwhelming majority, 
we might fairly add Canada to the list of Protestant countries. 
Though but a colony, it has been entrusted with large powers of 
self-government ; and recent legislation has placed in the power of 
(he Assembly to deal with, as it pleases, the property held for years 
by the Established Church, under the name of the clergy reserves. 
As, however, we are determined to deal more severely with our 
own than with our opponents' side, we shall not press it into our 
ranks. 

" Thus have we made the grand continental tour of Europe, and 
traversed the entire globe, in the effort to condense from each, into 
our panorama, the striking features that bear on this great ques- 
tion, that each day more and more agitates the heart of Europe. 
We have at length returned home, and find ourselves, not displeas- 
ed if somewhat fatigued, in Great Britain again. It is but a 
unit in the account, but one that surpasses in magnitude the aggre- 
gate of nearly all the rest. Circling the wide globe with its de- 
pendencies, embracing under its sway some portion of every 
quarter of the earth, its 160 millions would outnumber the inha- 
bitants of all the states that own Roman Catholic rule 2 . Its free 
institutions are therefore of incalculable value to the progress of 

1. This is the report of the Rev. Mr. Mullen, who was sent over last year to make a collec- 
tion for the projected Newman University. He conceives that, out of more than fifteen mil- 
lions, there are less than two millions of Roman Catholics. He would be more correct in making 
tiie numbers t wenty-three and three millions. See freeman's Journal, April 24, 1852. — 2. These 
do not exceed at most 150 millions. Those under Protestant laws ate about 220 millions. 



270 



the human race, and its scattered possessions are centres whence 
a kindred spirit may diffuse itself amid surrounding oppression. 
It, therefore, fitly closes our list of tolerant states, and enables us 
to pause and view the general result. 

" Out of eleven Protestant countries, we have found but one into- 
lerant, and not one such as we have called above ' exclusively into- 
lerant, 3 or wholly forbidding the profession of any but the Esta- 
blished religion. 

"Out of twenty-two Roman Catholic, we could detect but seven 
tolerant, and there were ten ' exclusively intolerant . ' 

"Thus the in-tolerance of Protestantism is one-eleventh, and the 
toleration of Roman Catholicism is but one-third of their respective 
numbers; or, to reduce them to a common standard of comparison, 
Roman Catholic intolerance is just thirty-three times more general 
than Protestant ! " 

Although M. Nicolas denies the Protestants the merit of tolera- 
tion, he goes so far as to allow that they profess the principle. 
There is, then, a chance that this principle may come into practice; 
whereas it is impossible that those who deny the theory should ever 
admit the application. Men pass away, principles remain, and that 
is enough for the cause we are defending. But it is curious to see 
how M. Nicolas turns against us the arms directed at his own 
church. " The intolerance of Protestantism is so much the more 
crying, " he says, " because, different from that with which Catho- 
licism is reproached, it is without excuse ; it is quite arbitrary, and 

sins not only from excess, but from principle the intolerance 

of authority is legitimate; for whilst it does not allow of licentious- 
ness, it secures liberty such intolerance has a necessary foun- 
dation, and is perfectly justifiable : such has been the intolerance of 
Catholicism l ." 

All this may be reduced to the following few words : " We, who 
have been arrogating to ourselves so much authority, cannot be in- 
tolerant, to whatever lengths we may go ; but you, who depart from 
the principle of liberty, however slight your deviations maybe in 
practice, they are criminal. For us, Catholics, that which we do 
not tolerate must necessarily be licentiousness ; u our intolerance 
is necessary, and by our principle it is perfectly j ustifiable. " Why, 
no doubt it is, since it is you who have framed both the principle 
and the application ! That is just what we blame you for; you set 
up for masters, you arrogate to yourselves the right of saying : this 



1. Nicolas, p. 481. 



277 



is lawful, but not that; you bestow upon yourselves an inquisitor's 
patent, and then naively exclaim, may we not burn you if we 
please? — No, you may not, and your first fault was to use that 
right, by claiming absolute authority. 

But the conscience of M. Nicolas rises against the consequences 
of his theory; she obliges him to stoop from the accuser's part to 
that of the accused. Let us hear how he tries to prove that the In- 
quisition is not the work of the Roman Catholic church : " Catho- 
licism, " he says, "is not called to bear the responsibility of the 
Inquisition; it is not her work, it is that of Philip II, and especially 
of Ferdinand and Isabella. True, clerical divines took a part in 
this institution, and composed the tribunal, but it was for the pur- 
pose of deciding cases of heresy ; somewhat after the manner of a 
jury, pronouncing upon the fact of culpability, without inflicting 
the penalty 1 . " 

Thus, ecclesiastics take part in the Inquisition, and make up the 
board ; but merely to decide on cases of heresy, and not to apply 
the penalty. They know perfectly well that if the crime of heresy 
be found, an auto-da-fe must follow; but that goes for nothing; so 
much the worse for the heretic, if the law condemns sins; his reve- 
rence has merely said " you are guilty of heresy. " Now we ask, 
which of the two is most guilty, Caiaphas or Pilate? Caiaphas say- 
ing of our Lord, He hath blasphemed, or Pilate answering, Well, 
crucify him yourselves ? The Caiaphases of the Inquisition in fact 
so palpably did the duty of crucifyers that the heretic was arrested 
at their request, questioned by them, by them put on the rack, 
condemned, and finally led to torture. The character of an execu- 
tioner would be honourable, we admit, in comparison with this ; for 
an executioner is compelled to obey the orders he has received. 

We shall, however, follow M. Nicolas as he passes on from tole- 
rance to intellectual culture, and see how this new subject supplies 
him with an opportunity of endeavouring to prove the superiority 
of the Catholics over the Protestant nations. 

The first, the great, we had almost said the only, fact M. Nicolas 
adduces to make his proposition good is the building of cathedrals! 
There he finds everything, the whole of the arts and sciences, from 
Alpha down to Omega. We do not refute his arguments, we 
merely note them as they occur. 

The second proof M. Nicolas gives of the partiality of the Roman 
Catholics to the diffusion of knowledge, is the favourable manner 



1. Nicolas, \). 485. 



278 



in which the Pope regarded the invention of printing. We have 
but one word here in answer. Since the favourable reception 
j ast now alluded to, the results of printing, as far as the pon- 
tifical states go, are only known to us by their list of forbidden 
books. 

Here M. Nicolas turns round upon the Reformation, and affirms 
" that, after having sacrificed everything to the rights of private 
reason, Protestantism has sacrificed reason to the Scriptures, and 
the Scriptures to reason 1 . " 

What a deal of meaning in this concise sentence ! In the first 
place, everything is annihilated by Scripture; then Scripture is 
annihilated by reason ; finally, reason is annihilated by Scripture, 
In short, amongst the Protestants we find nothing but complete an- 
nihilation, darkness, and chaos ! 

Words ! Words! Words ! we refer, for facts, to the two volumes 
our readers have just perused. 

After having made it quite clear that the breath of Protestantism 
extinguishes every torch, both human and divine, M. Nicolas at- 
tacks Luther, and quotes passages where the Reformer reviles, in 
succession, nearly every book in the Bible, beginning with the 
Pentateuch, going on with the Gospels, and concluding with the Reve- 
lations. We have already shown to what degree of confidence the 
quotations of M. Nicolas are entitled; we, then, confine ourselves 
to notice here a curious fact. The Revue cle Strasbourg (Ja- 
nuary, 4853), proves that the alleged passage has been altered, and 
signifies nearly the contrary of what M. Nicolas undertakes to make 
it say. To cut the matter short, we would ask : is it likely that 
Luther destroyed, leaf after leaf, a book he spent years in translat- 
ing ; a book which was the sole foundation of his work as a re- 
former; a book the perusal of which he had a hundred times recom- 
mended; a book but we must bear in mind that we are not 

refuting; we are only exposing the arguments of M. Nicolas; for, 
in this case, to expose, is to have refuted 2 . 

As, when he examined the principle of toleration, so now that he 
is treating of intellectual culture, M. Nicolas is driven, by the very 
nature of things, to forsake the attack and put himself upon the 
defensive. Forgetting his task, viz., the demonstration that Pro- 
testantism and obscurantism are identical, he sets about clearing his 

1. Nicolas, p. 503. — 2. If the reader will refer, not even to Luther's works, but to 
M. Alzog's second-hand quotations from which M.Nicolas has taken, selected, and arranged his 
own, he will see that the German reformer rejects only the apoc;ypha;if he prefers one 
Gospel or one Epistle to another, he really condemns neither any of the Epistles, nor any of 
the Gospels. 



270 



church of the crime of having condemned Galileo. Let us follow 
him on this ground. 

**■ Galileo, " says he, "was not condemned as a good astronomer, 
hut as a had divine 1 ." 

Do you not admire the power of this distinction ? Why, Monsieur 
Nicolas, if the earth turns round the sun, it is true in theology as 
it is in astronomy. With respect to such a question as this, the 
qualities which make a good astronomer cannot produce a had theo- 
logian. Neither Galileo nor the Bible Were in error. Who, then? 
Merely the divines who condemned Galileo, and put upon the Word 
of God a wrong interpretation. Thus we see that on this point, the 
sole object of condemnation, Galileo was the good divine, whilst 
the unsound men were the inquisitors, and their president the 
Pope ! 

M. Nicolas is desirous of proving, not only that the comdemna- 
tion was just, but also that Galileo was pleased with it ; and he quotes 
a letter of the persecuted sage, where, in the midst of equivocal 
phrases, torn from his as him retraction itself was by the torture, we 
find the following sentence, which plainly reveals the nature of his 
thoughts : "I have been obliged to retract my opinion 1 . " 

What! you have the courage to quote, in defence of the judge, 
these words of the accused : " I have been obliged, forced, con- 
strained, to retract my opinion ? >■ It is a courage well worthy of 
the inquisitors, imposing the torture, compelling a man to say things 
he does not believe, and then sending him either to the dungeon or 
to the stake. 

M. Nicolas does not seem very satisfied with his own defence of 
the Inquisition, for he denies the Holy Office : " The tribunal of 
the Holy Office/' he says, does not absolutely represent Catholicism 
itself. " The Inquisition, no doubt, did not constitute the whole of 
Catholicism; but it was its work, and that is sufficient for us to 
judge the workman. 

After having justified Catholicism of the accusation of not favour- 
ing intellectual culture, M. Nicolas proceeds to condemn our re- 
formers : he alludes to Luther's interview with the devil, to the 
ghost which appeared before Zwingle, We must be allowed to 
repeat what we said at the beginning : we are not sitting in j udgment 
upon the reformers of the sixteenth century, but upon those of the 
nineteenth. At the same time, we shall mark here the futility of 
such arguments, in order to show better the weakness of the cause. 



I. Nicolas, p. 508. — 2, Idem, p. 510, 



280 

Zwingle had, the preceding evening, a warm public discussion on 
the actual presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the con- 
secrated bread of the sacrament administered every day for fifteen 
centuries in thousands of places. He was full of his subject; he 
thought of it after the closing of the discussion ; he thought of it 
in the evening, in the night, nay, in the midst of his dreams. 
Correct ideas mingled with strange images presented themselves to 
his mind. His imagination awoke in spite of the fatigue which 
overwhelmed his body, and supplied him with a good argument. Is 
there any thing astonishing in this ? Has M. Nicolas never had any 
rational dreams even in the midst of fantastic images ? And would 
any one think of calling him , for that reason, either a superstitious 
or an ignorant man ? Certainly not. Well, then, apply to Zwingle 
the rule by which you would like to be measured yourself? 

Such was Zwiugle's dream, related by himself as such : " Som- 
nium enim narro, " says he. Now, would you believe, M. Nicolas 
gives as a fact what Zwingle declares to have been a dream. 
" Zwingle, the father of Protestantism in Switzerland, was assisted 
likewise by a certain devil or spirit, either white or black, etc *. " 

1 ask the reader : is it fair to present as a fact what was actually 
nothing but a dream ? Can any one be made responsible for his 
dreams ? 

But there is something still worse in the conduct of M. Nicolas. 
Not only did Zwingle speak of this event as of a dream, but he 
never even said that a devil took part in it. This devil is the in- 
vention of M. Nicolas or his friends. Let us state the plain fact : 
Zwingle, on awakening, not being able to recollect the appearance 
of the person he had dreamt about, and wishing to express his own 
uncertainty on the subject, said he could not remember even if it 
were black or white : " Ater fuerit an albus nihil memini; " and 
M. Nicolas, who has already changed the dream into a fact, slips in 
slyly the word devil; thus, in the twinkling of an eye, he transforms 
an intelligent thinker, who reasons well even whilst dreaming, into 
a superstitious man who talks nonsense even whilst wide awake. 

Our intention was also to have spoken of Luther's devil ; but the 
example we have quoted shows the worth of a critic who can judge so 
lightly. Luther believed in the devil ; but M. Nicolas, who believes 
that Satan was the first Protestant, does not he also believe in him? 
Luther thought the devil was hostile to his translation of the 
Bible, destined to enlighten the people on the errors of Papacy, and 



1. Nicolas, p. 516. 



281 



that, on this account, the evil spirit came and disturbed him in his 
labours whilst confined within the fortress of Wartburg. Does 
M. Nicolas, then, believe, as a good Catholic, that the devil only 
torments people who take his own side of the question ; St. Anthony, 
for instance? M. Nicolas, in this case, is schismatic in the church to 
which he belongs ; for in every age the priests have exorcised and 
cast out devils; nay, if we believe his bishops, legions of evil spirits 
at the present time are making tables both talk and turn. We ad- 
mit that Luther was wrong in supposing that the devil visited him 
in prison. But what does this prove? First, that the source from 
which he drew so erroneous a fancy was Catholicism ; and, secondly, 
that God did not allow the devil to assault Luther, as has been the 
case for so many Catholic saints. We cannot see, however, a proof 
of the ignorance of Protestants. M. Nicolas, at last, grapples with 
his subject; he is going to show us Catholicism working for the 
good of mankind, endeavouring to spread light all over the world. 
By what means? Through the agency of the religious orders; the 
Jesuits, amongst others. Here again we decline entering upon a 
controversial discussion, and opposing to the learned labours of a 
few orders the ignorance and scandalous deportment exhibited by 
the rest. Our only object is to place before our readers some ar- 
guments which they might have thought strong, had they not 
known them. Let us then fully understand that the light of which 
Catholicism boasts is that spread abroad by the various religious 
orders, benedictines, oratorians, capucins, and Jesuits. These last, 
especially, excite our author's admiration; he enumerates fondly 
the universities which they have established and governed; that 
of Vienna, for example, of which M. Saint-Marc-Girardin says: 
" It has no renown, no celebrated professor, no clever work has 
ever gone forth from the midst of it; " although, or, rather, because, 
" the influence of the Jesuits and their method prevail in the fre- 
quent examinations of the Faculte 1 : " that of Freyburg, " a town 
whose population, " saysM. de Rougemont, " are ignorant and su- 
perstitious, " although, or, rather, because, at Freyburg " there is 
one priest for every 1 8 inhabitants ! the canton, besides, has pro- 
duced very few celebrated men 2 . " M. Nicolas tells us of the won- 
derful visions of the Jesuits in Paraguay — a country where the 
savages learnt to handle the pick-axe and the gun for the benefit of 
the reverend fathers, and at the king of Portugal's expense; — where 
the converts returned to the bush as soon as their masters were 

1. Girardin, p. 182, 183. — 2. Rougemont, p. 317. 



282 



gone; — where there is no trace, at present of the Jesuit mission, 
except the tyranny of Dr. Francia! After having done with his 
eulogy of the Jesuits, M. Nicolas returns to his accusations against 
Protestantism, and thus enters fully upon the subject which we have 
discussed . He will show us precisely the reverse of what we thought 
we had understood in the course of our two volumes ; he will prove 
that England, and especially Scotland, have degenerated from their 
ancient splendour; he will cause the light of antiquity to shine in 
the midst of modern darkness. Edinburgh, the Northern Athens ; 
Glasgow and its industry; Sir Walter Scott, the poet; Dugald 
Stewart, the philosopher; Adam Smith, the economist; James 
Watt, the inventor of the steam engine; must they all hide their 
diminished heads... before what? Before one of the Hebrides 
which once contained some convents. Excuse me, courteous reader; 
but were you aware that there existed in a corner of the world an 
ilot called Iona? I doubt it, for this place is not even marked on 
the generality of maps. Well, it was there that more light was to 
be found in days of yore than can be discovered at present through- 
out the whole of the Scotch Church; and, as a proof that tlie country 
had degenerated, M. Nicolas " does not know whether the present 
inhabitants " of an ilot which formerly could boast of so many monks, 
u have now even a minister to instruct them 4 . " 

We beg the reader's pardon, but we cannot coolly discuss such 
arrant nonsense. Because an island, selected long ago by certain 
monks as a place of shelter from a barbarous country, is now 
abandoned by savants who can live quietly in any part of civilised 
Scotland, is that a reason why Protestantism should have extin- 
guished the torch of intellectual progress? Why speak of Iona, the 
residence of a few fishermen, and leave unmentioned Edinburgh, 
Glasgow, Aberdeen, the most learned cities in the world ? Why 
not have compared the Catholic London of the fifteenth century 
with the Protestant London of the nineteenth? There was the 
point... and your condemnation! 

Now, shall we enter into the same particulars respecting three 
Scotch and three Irish cities, whom M. Nicolas casually names ? 
No ; but in the meanwhile, as we do not wish to seem as if we 
avoided the objection, we shall say that the cities described are 
more flourishing now than they formerly were, and that the only 
way of reconciling with truth M. Nicolas's vague assertion is to 
take into serious account the designation he makes of episcopal and 



h Nicolas, p. 530. 



283 



abbatial cities. As such, these localities have heen deteriorated, no 
doubt ; nor is this fact astonishing, for the Scotch towns are now 
Protestant, and the Irish ones have gained in industry what they 
lost in priests. On the other hand, if the last-named cities, which 
are still Roman Catholic, are shorn of their intellectual glory, it is 
no fault of the Protestants ; the Catholics even are not to blame; 
for in one of them, at Thurles, are still to be found a Catholic church, 
a Catholic college, Catholic convents, and a Catholic monastery. 
The fault, then, is not with man, but with the principles of the 
Catholic religion, which has allowed the torch of human intellect 
to become extinct, or at least has preserved only the faint glimmer 
of the middle ages, whilst the broad light of truth was Hashing 
elsewhere. To quote Catholic cities which have fallen from their 
bygone intellectual eminence, is to condemn Catholicism, which 
has allowed or caused their decay. 

M. Nicolas at length draws up a list of illustrious men who have 
belonged to Catholicism and to Protestantism, respectively, in order 
to exalt the former and to depreciate the latter. He says, indeed, 
he will not discuss individual cases ; we think that it was impossible 
to treat even the general question ; but since M. Nicolas attempts 
to do so, we ought at least to show his way of thickening the 
ranks of the men of genius who have belonged to his church, dimi- 
nishing, as a matter of consequence, the number of those whose 
names are found in the annals of the rival community. It is thus 
that he presents to us, as the offsprings of Catholicism, Moliere, the 
author of Tartuffe, and Pascal, the Jansenist, the author of the 
Provincial Letters, whom he elsewhere calls " a calumniator full of 
genius ! " Thus again, on the other hand, M. Nicolas, obliged to 
acknowledge that Newton and Kepler were Protestants, says that 
this proves nothing in favour of Protestantism ; for, " if they were 
learned men and great . discoverers, it was at their own expense, 

so to say *' At their own expense? We do not understand; 

let us proceed ; the idea will become clearer. " Bacon and 
Leibnitz reflect the greatest credit upon humanity; but the former 
belonged to that class of solitary minds, unconnected, as far as 
genius goes, with the society of which they are members 4 . The 
general idea of M. Nicolas may, then, be expressed as follows : 
a man of genius, born in a Catholic community, be he a stage- 
player or a Jansenist, is the boast of Catholicism. Another man of 
genius, Newton, for instance, publishing works on divinity, nay, 



1, Nicolas, p. 532. 



commentaries on the Book of Revelation-, ami calling the Pope 
antichrist, goes for nothing. Intellects like his have nothing to do 
with Protestantism! Let us proceed. We are now on the true 
ground of discussion ; we are approaching our own times. But 
for what glorious names has M. Nicolas prepared the crown of 
Catholicism? Three in all : M. de Bonald, the adversary of the 
French Revolution; M. de Maistre, the author of a hock on The 
Pope, in which the common hangman plays so conspicuous apart; 
and M. de Chateauhriand. of whom it is acknowledged, in the 
same page, that he " romanced the Gospel! 2 " 

M. Nicolas gets gradually nearer the difficulty; at last he touches 
it. and tries to explain how it is that the Protestant nations are not 
plunged now-a-days into complete obscurity. It is because the 
light of Catholicism has penetrated them. There is only one little 
objection to make to M. Nicolas. If the Protestant nations are 
now compelled to borrow their light from the Catholics, can you 
account for the fact that the Catholic torch is extinguished in 
Spain, m Portugal, in Italy, in Ireland? Will you explain why 
the borrower is richer than the lender? the disciple better 
instructed than the teacher? If Prussia, for instance, has been 
indebted for so much to Austria and Bavaria, whence is it that these 
two last-named countries are reduced at present to seek in Pro- 
tectant nations their literature and their professors? If England 
and Scotland are penetrated by the beams of the Catholic sun, 
how is it that Ireland cannot boast of one intellectual meteor? 
Here again we pass on. 

It now only remains for M. Nicolas to prove — a difficult task — 
that the morality of Catholic countries is greater than that of Protes- 
tant ones. Before coming to facts, he examines the principles. In 
ail our doctors, from Luther downwards to Vinet, he finds revolt- 
ing tenets, and a very low code of morality. We have already 
shown how upon this subject M. Nicolas alters texts just to suit his 
own purposes ; we have made it quite clear that he goes so far as to 
say that such and such a writer tolerates amongst clergymen certain 
bad inclinations, whilst, on the contrary, the incriminated author 
not only reproves these inclinations both in the clergy and the laity, 
but is scrupulous enough to condemn in the former •'•'many tastes 
which in themselves are quite innocent. *' We will not return to 
this subject, nor will we lose further time in refuting the objection 
a hundred times refuted, that the Protestant doctrines sanction 



1. Rvxue dc Stratlourg, January, 1833. 



285 



looseness of morals. To show the absurdity of (his objection, it 
would be sufficient to state it inM. Nicolas's own words. How can 
we reply to the following assertion ? " Seeing that it was unable to 
reform society, Protestantism has adduced this incapacity itself as 
a reform, and instead of regulating the morals of men according to 
the standard of doctrines, it has shaped its doctrine according to the 
general tone of public morals 1 . " 

This is still the old calumny refuted by Saint Paul : " Let us sin 
that grace may abound." It is the common burden of all the detrac- 
tors of Protestantism, who accuse our religion of saving man gratui- 
tously, in order that he may be authorised to commit sin. We 
maintain, that any one who can believe such a doctrine to be 
preached by a church which has existed for three centuries, must 
either be a liar or a fool ! The Protestants have proclaimed the 
doctrines of grace, like the Jansenists, Saint Augustin, and 
Saint Paul; a doctrine which, instead of sanctioning vice, insists 
upon sanctification, without making a merit of it. But all this has 
been said so often, and so well, that we have not the courage to re- 
peat it. 

It now remains to be proved whether the lives of the Protestants 
correspond with the abominable doctrines ascribed to them. It 
may be easily perceived that here M. Nicolas is rather puzzled 
by facts ; he is obliged to confess that Protestants are better than 
Protestantism 2 ; and he tries to get out of the difficulty by a dis- 
tinction. If there is any virtue amongst Protestants, it is not be- 
cause they are Protestants, but because they have preserved some 
traces of Catholicism ! A very happy subterfuge ! When, else- 
where, M. Nicolas feels obliged to confess to evil among the Catholic 
nations, he will turn his arguments and say that it is not because 
they are Catholics, but because they have been tainted by Protes- 
tant venom. With the help of such arguments any cause might 
be defended ; but, as some persons would hardly credit that they 
have been broached by a writer of our own times, we shall quote 
one sentence of M. Nicolas's : " It is to Catholicism, " he says, 
" that we must trace whatever slight remains of religious princi- 
ples are to be found in the Protestant nations ; and to Protestantism 
what is impious in Catholic countries 3 . " 

After that, you will not be surprised if M. Nicolas sometimes 
humbles France, calling her " actually Protestant;" and presently 
exalts her on account of those centres of action, full of charity, 



1. Nicolas, p. 552. — 2. LUm, p. 55 — 3. Idem, p. 572. 



286 



self-denial, devotedness, and holiness keeping up in the heart 

of the nation a sense of moral and religious worth far superior, 
after all, to that of all the other countries 1 ." 

Is that all? No; England, too, must he humbled, and national 
jealousies aroused by a comparison with France. This is what we 
have avoided; but, since M. Nicolas attacks Great Britain, we are 
constrained to answer his accusations. 

He reproaches England for her many poor, being doubtless igno- 
rant of the fact, that, under the influence of Romanism, one-third 
of the people were in a state of indigence 2 , from the very plain 
reason that the clergy, at that time, preserved half the landed pro- 
perty 3 . If there is poverty in the British isles, Ireland is especially 
its hot-bed; at all events, Protestant England relieves her poor 
bountifully, and in Scotland their number is comparatively few. 

M. Nicolas quotes M. Leon Faucher on the subject of Whitecha- 
pel, but he is not aware, as we have elsewhere remarked, that in 
that spot it is thy* Irish Catholics who are sunk in misery and vice; 
whilst the descendants of the French Protestant refugees are re- 
markable by their moral and intellectual superiority 4 . 

M. Nicolas quotes moreover a report of M. Eugene Rendu, writen 
a propos of the Crystal Palace, and in which it is said that C( the city 
of London alone... " But why speak of the city of London alone? 
Is London identical to England ? London, whose very prosperity 
attracts so many strangers, can it be fairly considered alone when 
speaking of the crimes of a nation ? Can London, in this respect, 
be compared with Paris — Paris, which has no sea-port, no manu- 
factories — comparatively speaking — and, above all, no Irish ? 

This anti-English effusion brings to our mind the one directed 
against the United States of America. M. Nicolas wishes to prove 
that New York cannot appreciate the fine arts, and as an evidence 
of this he tells us of the " enthusiastic applause lavished by this 
merchant people upon Lola-Montes ! h,} 

Do you feel all the force of the argument ? The merchants of the 
United States have applauded Lola-Montes ; therefore it is impos- 
sible that from amongst them should ever spring a Saint Theresa, a 
Saint Francois de Sales, a Corneille, or a Raphael ! 

We have only three answers to give. In the first place, the fine 
arts of Avhich M. Nicolas here makes special mention have not 
, much to do with religion. One must understand the Scriptures 
after the Roman Catholic fashion to give so much importance to 

1. Nicolas, p. 576. — 2. De Jonnes, vol. i, p. 147. — 3. idem , p. 112. — 4. Leou Fanclier, 
vol. l, pp. 12, 13. — 5. INicolas, p. 539. 



painting and music. Secondly, if the United Stales have produced 
neither a Saint Theresa, nor a Saint Francois de Sales, nor a Gor- 
neille, nor a Raphael, they have given birth to Washington, Frank- 
lin, Cooper, Irving, General Jackson, John Clay, Webster, and 
many others, in the course of a few years, not of a few centuries. 

A last word, besides, to overturn your argument at once. Your 
famous Lola-Montes, a Spaniard and a Catholic — Lola-Montes, 
made Countess of Mansfeld by a Catholic King as a reward for her 
adulterous faiblesses, and driven out of the country by an indignant 
people ; — Lola-Montes never received in the United Slates the ap- 
plause of admiring crowds ! You mean, perhaps, Jenny Lind, the 
singer, who has neither been the wife of two or three husbands at 
the same time, nor the mistress of many lovers, nor even an opera 
dancer; Jenny Lind, singing only in concert-rooms, and giving most 
of her large income to the poor and to religious institutions ; 
Jenny Lind, the Swedish lady, who received a bible from the hands 
of the Bishop of Norwich, must be a Protestant. Now, Monsieur 
Nicolas, what remains of your famous argument about Lola-Montes ? 

We should reproach ourselves were we to prolong this discus- 
sion ; there is, no doubt, plenty more to say , but we wish to re- 
member that the force of oar arguments consists in simply exposing 
the objections, and allowing the mere statement to carry the refu- 
tation along with it. We, however, thought it right the reader 
should know them, that he might perceive our adversaries have 
nothing serious to say. ■ 

Thus far we have directed our attention only to the objections 
made by the Roman Catholic parly. There are others which, 
although not brought forward with the same noise, exist neverthe- 
less silently amongst infidel minds. Some persons believe they are 
raising themselves to a great height when they deny the import- 
ance of religious faith, either as a source of civilisation or a cor- 
rupting principle; at the same time laying great stress on the 
influence of races and climate towards the formation of manners. 
Let us examine this new pretension. 

Climate, certainly, docs act upon the development of civilisation ; 
but has this element the importance generally ascribed to it ? Does 
it not allow plenty of room for the action of religious faith? Such 
is the first question. 

Let us remark, to begin with, that climate acts in various ways. 
A high temperature enervates the mind, whilst it renders the earth 
fruitful ; so man gains on one hand what he loses on the other. 
A cold temperature stimulates the intellect by the wants it pro- 



duces; but it makes the ground sterile, and deprives it of part of its 
produce. In this manner, although they are giving to climate an 
influence which it does not possess, some persons might at the same 
time maintain that it acts in opposite ways ; and, as our comparison 
bears on all points, we may believe that whilst it is favourable on 
the one hand, it acts prejudicially on the other. There is, then, 
a compensation. 

But climate has not the importance ascribed to it. If it were the 
chief cause of civilisation, man would become little else than a 
vegetable, ripened or retarded in its growth by the changes of 
wet and heat ! If climate is the most powerful cause, they should 
tell us in what manner it acts. Is it the heat or the cold that 
developes intellect? Suppose this question is answered, we shall 
require to be shown that the influence of climate has always 
followed the same law. Now this is contradicted by facts ; civili- 
sation flourished at one time under the blue sky of Greece, when 
foggy England was still in a state of barbarity. The climate of 
both these countries has remained much the same, but barbarism 
and civilisation have completely changed places 1 . The Moors for- 
merly prospered on the same soil where the Spaniards are now 
sunk in wretchedness. To cut the matter short, let us fix our 
attention on three countries : The United States in the middle, 
Canada on one side, Brazil on the other. Now let us hear which 
point of the compass helps on civilisation. Is it the north or the 
south ? If the north, why is Catnolic Canada inferior in intellect 
and in wealth to the United States? If the south, why are the 
United States superior in all respects to Brazil? Remark, too, 
that climate, taken as a cause, only applies to certain nations; 
whereas the religious test bears upon ail; it is a key which has 
opened every door, solved every difficulty. An hypothesis which 
explains all the cases of a problem must be a true one. 

Do the human races account for the progress of intellect better 
than climate? We do not pretend to be more absolute on this 
point than on the other. To deny the influence of races would be 
to deny the bond which unites the physical with the moral world. 
Influence does not imply domination ; we grant something to this 
agent, but at the same time we would have our adversaries grant 
us that it is not everything. If they decline doing so, as in the 
case of climate, we need only oppose both objections against each 
other ; they would mutually destroy themselves. 



1. The civilisation of England lias done more to alter its climate, tlian the climate to form 
the civilisation. 



280 



In fact, the argument usually brought forward is a strange one. 
It is found that the Saxon race has chiefly embraced Protestantism, 
and is making rapid strides in the arena of civilisation ; whereas 
the Latin family has remained Catholic, and moves very slowly in 
every sort of progress, when it does not become stationary. Then, 
without taking any notice of the religious convictions which 
animate the heart and quicken the mind, some say : These 
progress, because they are Saxons; those are stationary, be- 
cause they are of Latin origin. Why should they not say : These 
advance, because they are Protestants ; those hold back, because 
they are Catholics? Is the former assertion better proved than the 
latter ? In assigning race as the cause of civilisation, do they show 
the necessary relation it bears to the effect produced ? In nowise : 
it is an affirmation, nothing more. In pointing out faith as a 
cause of moral life, we state an opinion which is supported by plain 
common sense; we do not feel compelled to prove how this is 
brought about. Whoever takes the trouble to listen to his own 
thoughts, or observe his own actions, must be conscious of the 
influence which his inward principles exercise upon his outward 
conduct. 1 do not know whether my understanding has anything 
to do with my white skin ; but I know that I flee from evil, because 
I fear God. Take away my faith, and the colour of my skin 
will not prevent me from giving myself up to injustice and 
selfishness. 

Besides, here again we can answer by facts. The Irish celts 
belong to the same race as those which inhabit the Scotch 
highlands ; and yet, why are the two tribes so different from each 
other! Because the former are idle Catholics, and the latter in- 
dustrious Protestants. The Italians and the French of our southern 
provinces belong to the Iberian race ; how can we account for the 
difference which exists between our Huguenot refugees and the Nea- 
politan lazzaroni? The former, under the liberal principles of the 
Reformation, have developed their minds by examining for 
themselves ; whilst the others have stupidly submitted to the au- 
thority of a clergy which has always discountenanced instruction. 
The same Saxons have spread over Germany and England : if reli- 
gion does not make the difference, why the striking contrast 
between the Englishman and the Austrian? To conclude, why 
should Switzerland, setting aside origin, be divided throughout into 
two distinct parties ; the one, well-informed, rich, and Protestant ; 
the other generally poor, ignorant, and Catholic? 

Strange to say we see every day extreme differences between the 
T. II. 19 



290 



children of the same parents ; we explain these differences by the 
circumstances in which they have heen brought up : education, 
society, fortune, etc. ; but, as soon as religious faith is the point 
moved, some persons dismiss from their considerations the various 
causes just now stated, and will not acknowledge that faith or 
unbelief, which lies hid in every soul, can have any influence * they 
introduce afresh the question of race, in order to ascribe to it all 
the discrepancies which strike us among individuals ! But, then, be 
consistent : draw a logical inference . Man, turned out of a brass 
mould, is irresponsible; he has neither vices nor virtues, but simply 
physical predispositions, erroneously called moral tendencies, and 
which he can neither strive against, nor strengthen ! Thus, to 
argue is, we see, to deny the influence of education and the use of 
laws; it is to overthrow the whole fabric of society. 

In reality, the question of race and of climate are identical : yes, 
climate does influence mankind ; yes, races do diversify men in ge- 
neral ; but these differences of races have been created partly by the 
difference of climate, here by the latitude, there by the elevation 
of the soil, elsewhere by a thousand accidental causes too long to 
enumerate. It is the persistency, the perpetuity of such climac- 
teric causes, which in the long run increases the variety of races, 
and the sum of our argument may be stated thus : physical man is 
liable to be modified by the physical element in which he moves; 
these modifications, in their turn, go so far as to influence his mo- 
ral being; but, finally, the whole is restrained within limits which 
allow to religious faith a vast field of action. Man is neither 
a plant, nor a beaver ; he is free, intelligent, moral, and re- 
sponsible. 

In order to say all we think upon this subject, we must add that 
whatever, in the races of mankind, cannot be accounted for by 
climate, finds its explanation in the moral man : he, on the other 
hand, modifies the climate, so that the two causes assigned to civi- 
lisation are themselves modified by a primary and more general 
cause : the moral man himself. Physical influences may act upon 
the man; but it is in retarding, not in developing, his intellectual 
progress : the source of development dwells in him. Let him be 
enslaved, as he is by Catholicism, and he will lose all his powers; 
let him be unrestrained, as under the direction of Protestantism, 
and his faculties will become more and more expanded. Liberty 
alone will make him richer and more intelligent; then, the Word 
of God coining in, will render him happier and better. 

To conclude, Protestantism has been reproached for exciting in 



291 



the sphere of politics a revolutionary spirit by proclaiming in reli- 
gion the principle of free inquiry. 

We might merely ask here whether no revolutions are to he read 
of in history anterior to the sixteenth century: nay, whether the 
Popes themselves did not excite disturbances abroad by starting up 
the animosity of subjects against their sovereigns; and at home by 
exasperating so much their own people that more than one pontiff 
is known to have fallen a victim to their indignation. On one hand 
we see the Crusades begun by a monk, preached by the bishops of 
Rome, executed by the most Catholic princes and nations; on the 
other, we see the Popes encouraging the son of Henry IV in his 
revolt against his father; sanctioning in France the usurpation 
of the mayor Pepin in dethroning his lawful prince; fighting in Italy 
to secure a crown for their own relations ; all these facts would 
supply us with a formidable array of recriminations and defence. 
But let us come to a closer view of the question, and see what has 
been the state of Christendom in this respect since the dawn of 
Protestantism. 

In the first place, in order to ascertain whether it is the nature of 
Protestantism to create internal revolutions, we must not look at 
the origin of this religious franchise ; for the nations which adopt- 
ed the reformed principles were then, as we have already said, quite 
impregnated, so to say, with Roman Catholicism; and these struggles, 
besides, resulted from the efforts of the Romish party to oppose the 
progress of the Reformation. Religious war originated precisely 
from a wrong application of the principle of authority to spiritual 
things. What we have to examine is, whether by its doctrines 
Protestantism fosters rebellion ; whether, in fact, it has done so since 
it has begun to rule over nations. 

We admit that Protestantism, taking as its starting point free 
inquiry in matters of religion, has applied this principle to all 
things, politics included : we admit even that the public mind has 
become deeply imbued with it : what follows ? precisely the reverse 
of the opinion we are now refuting. The Protestant, brought up 
in the spirit of inquiry and of liberty, applies its rule to every cir- 
cumstance in his life, throughout all the classes of society. As a 
clergyman, a magistrate, a legislator, a monarch, whatever be the 
sphere in which he moves, he acts upon these principles to which 
he was trained since his youth. This spirit, leavening the 
whole lump, prepares both rulers and ruled to political changes 
which the march of intellect points out as necessary. It is not 
when everybody is walking forwards that collisions take place ; 



292 



it is, on the contrary, when those who take the lead offer 
resistance. 

Experience has proved what theory leads us to expect. Study 
the history of nations exclusively Protestant, and you will not find 
there the revolutions they are so rashly accused of. Civil war has 
disturbed neither England, nor Holland, nor the United States 
since they have become independent States. Progress of every 
description has been obtained in those three states without turmoil, 
quietly, by the mere development of the national institutions. 
Petitions, speeches, books; such are the barricades thrown up by 
Protestant revolutionists. And it is rather remarkable that these 
weapons have been especially made use of in England towards the 
emancipation of the Roman Catholics ! 

Let us now glance over the second term of the comparison, viz., 
Spain, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Peru, the whole of Southern Ame 
rica, France itself. What do we see there ? an uninterrupted series 
of riots, revolts, bloody revolutions. To consult only contempo- 
rary reminiscences, who is not frightened at the mere thought of the 
political disturbances which have taken place in those essentially 
Catholic countries? Mexico changes so often its president, and the 
Brazils are so constantly in a state of war, that it will be no offence 
to our readers if we remind them how ignorant they are as to the 
power which, for the present, rules in those countries. Is it Rosas? 
or Ribeiras? or General Santa-Anna? or any other quidnunc whose 
existence is revealed to-day by the newspapers, but who is doomed 
to fall on the morrow. In Spain, we have seen Don Carlos, Espar- 
tero, Queen Christina, and her daughter contending for power. 
Although civil war has only ceased for the last few years, we 
already see fresh riots bursting forth in several localities. In Por- 
tugal, Don Pedro and Don Miguel were contending for the throne. 
Quite recently, a political party rose in arms against the govern- 
ment, and if there was no bloodshed it was only due to the coward- 
ice of both factions. For twenty times within a very short space 
of time Italy has seen conspiracies originated and stifled. Car- 
bonari is an Italian name : we know of Milanese exiles : amongst its 
conspirators, Piedmont reckons a hero lately dead, Charles Albert. 
The Pope himself, after having been driven back out of his domi- 
nions and brought back again, can only be maintained in his in- 
fallibility by foreign bayonets. Shall we mention Naples, where 
Swiss troops must always be keeping the population in check? 
And Florence, whose sovereign withdrew in 1850 the liberties he 
had sworn to defend in 1848? Not one Italian city but has contri- 



293 



buted its quota to the number of refugees we are now harbouring. 
It is the same with Spain. And our poor native country! haw 
many revolutions has she not seen for the last sixty years? 
Louis XVI, Robespierre, Bonaparte the Consul, Napoleon the Em- 
peror. By an exception, Louis XYIIl dies on the throne, but only 
after having lived through the Hundred Days, and in spite of several 
conspiracies. Then the series of revolutions begins again : Charles X 
dies in exile in Germany; Louis-Philippe, an exile in England; 
the Republic was still-born; and Louis Bonaparte has been 
successively member of the Legislative Assembly, President of the 
Republic, and Emperor of the French. How can any persons 
be found bold enough, with all these facts before their eyes, to 
raise their voice and accuse the Protestants of stirring up revo- 
lutions. 

Let us leave those nations which are essentially Protestant or 
Catholic, and turn our attention to those where the two elements 
are mixed; and, strange to say, we shall find that, when revolt 
lifts up its head, it is always in the name of the Catholics. Thus, 
in the British Isles, it is Catholic Ireland which is riotous, rebel- 
lious, and keeps hard at work the greatest part of the army. In 
the Netherlands, Catholic Belgium revolts, and separates herself 
from the mother country. At Geneva, the radical party triumphs 
by the force of arms, with the help of Roman Catholic bands 
come expressly from Savoy for that purpose. When the whole of 
Switzerland took the field, it was in order to suppress the Sun- 
derbund : a Catholic conspiracy. To conclude : the electric spark 
which spread throughout Europe in 1 8-48, and shook semi-Catholic 
Prussia, as well as all other countries, was kindled in Catholic 
France! Thus, we may seek in vain during the last century for a 
revolution amongst a Protestant people; whereas we shall find ten 
for every Catholic community, where the spirit of liberty is constant- 
ly struggling against the spirit of despotism more or less avowed. 

Thus, the objections drawn from politics and from science, as 
well as those founded on religion, fall before the facts of history, 
and such being the conclusion, we remain perfectly justified in 
the following opinion we have maintained throughout this work : 
— If we compare the United States with the Brazils, Ireland with 
Scotland, the Swiss cantons together, Austria with Prussia, Spain 
with England, Catholic Italy with Reformed France, we shall find 
that from the threefold standpoint of physical comfort, intellectual 
progress, and morality, the superiority is always and everywhere 
on the Protestant side. But does this legitimate conclusion, drawn 



291 

from a survey of the countries above-named, apply equally to those 
beyond the circle of our observation? In other morels, is the su- 
periority of the Protestant over the Catholic nations so general that 
the cause may be ascribed to the very principles of the Reforma- 
tion ? Mich is the last point we have to examine. 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 



We have gone through the circle of the Protestant and Catholi 
nations : on each point of the circumference we have been enabled 
to make the same remarks. We might, therefore, legitimate 
generalise for ourselves, and say of Christianity as a whole what we 
have proved respecting each particular section of it. 

We shall, nevertheless, commit this task to fresh authorities ; 
and our quotations, instead of being confined to such and such a 
country, either Protestant or Catholic, shall bear upon the whole of 
the Catholic and Protestant world at large. 

And first, let us note this fact : Catholicism is disappearing; it is 
abandoned with disgust by every thinking, disinterested man, 
though he may not have embraced the doctrine of the Reformation : 
" The fact cannot be concealed/' says M. de Lamennais, " that, at 
the present day, Catholicism is in a stage of weakness and suffer- 
ing. The Church is sick, she languishes, and has ceased to extend 
her conquests. Scarcely able to preserve the acquisitions she made 
in past ages, she is like the sea abandoning the shores it used to 
wash 1 . Where is the influence which Rome was wont formerly 
to exercise on every mind? What has become of it, especially for 
the last four years, in France, in Germany, even in Poland ? Has 
she, in those countries , modified to the slightest extent public opi- 
nion, and public conscience? Except a few followers, men belong- 
ing to another age, who cares even to inquire about what she says? 
Forget coteries and their wretched agitation, look at the masses; 



1. Lamennais, Affaires de Rome, p, 207. 



296 

where are those which Popedom controls and directs? Every- 
thing has its reason ; what, then, is the reason of this decay of the 
Papal power? Rome knows fall well that her authority has long 
been less efficacious in Italy than anywhere else. The Italians 
hate Rome with an implacable hatred, for they consider her as the 
chief cause of their country's misfortunes 1 . 

" Assemble/"' says M. Quinet, " the bishops and archbishops of 
the whole earth ; if this council assumes the right of deciding ab- 
solutely on questions connected with the spiritual world, its ty- 
ranny will be as insufferable to me as that of the Bishop of Rome. 
Who would, in the present day, repudiate his thought, his moral 
right, the strength of internal evidence, before a convocation of the 
clergy, however numerous? If the priests were to summon at the 
bar of a council the Husses, the Jeromes of Prague, the Luthers of 
our days, they would run the risk of summoning the whole world. 
They have lost the majority ; and if their fate is to be settled by a 
vote of nations, how will they stand it V 

Whilst this decomposition of Catholic societies is going on, what 
has become of the Protestant nationalities? We shall begin by 
taking a general view : " Wherever the religious revolution of the 
sixteenth century prevailed, if it did not effect the entire enfran- 
chisement of the human mind, it procured for it a new and very 
great increase of liberty. It resuscitated and maintained in Ger- 
many a liberty of thought greater perhaps than anywhere else 

In Denmark, also, by the influence of the Reformation, thought was 
enfranchised and freely exercised in all directions. In Holland, 
in the midst of a republic, and in England, under constitutional 
monarchy, the emancipation of the human mind was likewise ac- 
complished. Lastly, in France, in a country where the Reforma- 
tion had been conquered, there even it was a principle of intellec- 
tual independence and liberty; a liberty which tended to the profit 
of science, to the honour of the French clergy, as well as to the 
profit of thought in general. Religious thought was then far 
more bold, and treated questions with more freedom, than the po- 
litical spirit of Fenelon himself in Telemachus. This state of 
things did not cease until the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 

" Wherever the Reformation penetrated, wherever it played an 
important part, victorious or vanquished, it had, as a general, do- 
minant, and constant result, an immense progress in the activity 
and liberty of thought, and towards the emancipation of the human 



1. Lamennais, p. 283. — 2. Quinet, p. 315. 



207 



mind Let us now take the counterproof of this inquiry ; let 

us see what happened in countries into which the religious revolu- 
tion had not penetrated, where it had never been developed. His- 
tory shows that there the human mind has not Seen enfranchised; 
two great countries, Spain and Italy, will prove this. Whilst in those 
European countries where the Reformation had taken an important 
place, the human mind, during the last three centuries, has gained 
an activity and a freedom before unknown, in those where it has 
not penetrated it has fallen, during the same period, into effemi- 
nacy and indolence Impulse of thought, therefore, is the 

essential character of the Reformation, the most general result of its 
influence, and the dominant fact of its destiny i . " 

" Throw a glance upon the history of the Jesuits ; they have 
everywhere failed. Wherever they have interfered to any extent, 
they have carried misfortune into the cause into which they 
mixed. In England they ruined kings ; in Spain, the people. The 
development of modern civilisation, the liberty of the human 
mind, all these powers against which the Jesuits were called upon 
to contest, fought and conquered them. And not only have they 
failed, but call to mind the means they have been obliged to 

employ They have acted only by underhand, obscure, and 

subordinate means The party against which they strug- 

gled, on the contrary, not only conquered, but conquered with 
splendour ; it did great things, and by great means; it aroused the 
people, it gave to Europe great men, and changed, in the face of 
day, the fashion and form of state 2 . " 

(i I might exhibit the Reformation in the diversity of its relations 
with the social order, bringing on in all directions results of 
mighty importance ! For instance, it awoke religion amidst the 
laity in the world of the faithful. It caused a general circulation 
of religious creeds; it opened to believers the field of faith, which, 
hitherto, they had no right to enter. It restored the independence 
of the temporal power 3 . " 

Leaving this generat view, let us descend to a few particulars. 
The Roman Catholic nations themselves were the first to reap the 
earliest fruits of the Reformation. The spirit of rivalry compelled 
the Popes to make concessions : what a downfall, from Hildebrand 
to Pius IX ! Villers says : " The Reformation alone could oppose a 
mound to this torrent. It struck by one blow both the rivals who 
were aspiring to impose chains upon Europe. Haughty Austria 



1. GllizOt, History of Civilisation in Europe, llazlitt's translation, lect. IV, \'Ol. I, pp. 122, 123. 
— 2. Idem, p. 227. — 3. idem, p. 233. 



298 



humbled and brought under restriction for ever. The Roman Pontiff 
lost a part of his dominions, and retained only a precarious power in 
those which he preserved. Powerful governments, too, have arisen, 
which, rivalling one another in whatever contributes to the glory 
and happiness of nations, commonly second the operation of that 
new spirit which animates the people, and hasten to remove every 
trace of the barbarism of the middle ages. 

u The gradual progress of knowledge," we may be told, u would 
insensibly have produced the same consequences, and have saved 
all the evils which sprang from such terrible commotions and 
lengthened wars. But those who object so do not reflect that, in 
the system of an Infallible Church, all the decisions of which are 
dictated by the Holy Spirit, such a Reformation as is requisite 
becomes impossible, and that it is contrary to the very spirit of 
Roman Catholicism. It is at least reasonable to doubt whether the 
desired change would have happened so soon, and have been so 
complete. It is certain that, at the period of the Reformation, the 
heads of the Catholic religion, who at first had discovered nothing 
in the revival of letters but glory and pleasure, or some tendency 
towards the refinement of manners, and who encouraged them 
under that idea, began to perceive their own danger in too much 
knowledge, and manifested a very distinct resistance. That oppo- 
sition has not speedily ceased in Austria, in Spain, in [taly, in the 
Netherlands, where all the means of inquisition and censure were 
employed to restrain 'the operations of mind, and turn improve- 
ment backwards. Let any one compare the political, literary, and 
religious condition of the greater part of those countries during the 
succeeding ages with the condition of Saxon Germany, of Holland, 
and England in the same respects; and let him judge, without 
prejudice, what could have been expected from the same policy, 
extended in all its rigour over Europe. 

" As to what might have been expected in course of time from 
Popes and the clergy, if they had been allowed to proceed as they 
chose in the full career of their power and credit, we may form a 
judgment from the physical and moral condition of the kingdoms 
immediately subject to ecclesiastical princes. The spirit of Popery, 
it is impossible to deny, is exclusive and intolerant : now the 
spirit of an intolerant institution cannot cease without putting 
an end to the institution itself. A testimony sufficiently de- 
cisive is , that the humane and virtuous Innocent XI was 
scarcely able to execute any of his laudable designs during a pon- 
tificate of twelve years. The Popes, since the Reformation, more 



200 

cautious, reduced, indeed, to the last stage of debility, have yielded 
by necessity in several encounters ; but what they wanted was 
strength, not inclination 4 : " 

If the beneficial influence of the Reformation was felt even by 
those people who had not embraced it, what must have been the 
blessings it imparted to the nations by which it was freely 
accepted? The freedom of thought is the one we shall mention 
first, because even our adversaries admit it as incontestable : 

"Let us reflect" continues M. Villers, "upon the immense appa- 
ratus of censures, of prohibitions, and of inquisitors which the Romish 
Church employed to keep all eyes shut at a time when every new 
opinion was a heresy, that is, a crime worthy of the direst punish- 
ment, and against which the rigour of the secular arm was requir- 
ed, and we shall shudder at the danger to which the human species 
was exposed before the sixteenth century. Had not the mind, by 
the happiest and most extraordinary concurrence of favourable 
circumstances, obtained, in rapid succession, new aids and fresh 
fuel to its activity, what would have become of that feeble spark of 
light which began to shine under the system of extinguishment 
and obscuration adopted by the Court of Rome ? Had not the art of 
printing and the reformation of religion proceeded from the bosom 
of laborious Germany ; had not the colossal power which bound 
the consciences and oppressed the minds of men received so many 
shocks in rapid succession, for how many ages might not the culture 
of the human mind, and the improvement of the political condition 
of man, have been retarded ! Let us put the question to the 
southern parts of Germany, to the people of the Two Sicilies, of 
Spain, and of Ireland. Let any impartial observer,, after having 
fairly ascertained the state of knowledge in those countries, make 
himself acquainted with the degree in which it exists in Switzer- 
land, in the two Saxonies, in Holland, and England ; the contrast 
cannot escape him. It is not asserted that in the Catholic countries 
above-named superior men, persons on a level with the most ele- 
vated of their age, are not to be found j but they are rare ; and only 
the masses of the people in different countries ought to be compared. 
True it is that in the close connection in which the different nations 
of our little Europe live together, it is impossible that the know- 
ledge existing in one country should not in some degree penetrate 
into the others. The wall of separation cannot be so raised, can- 
not be so vigilantly guarded, as to prevent individuals in all from 



i. Villers, Mill's translation, pp. 128, 131. 



300 



communicating with one another. But undoubtedly on the part 
of the Catholics no precautions have hitherto been neglected to 
ward off, as a dangerous disease, the liberal ideas of Protestantism 
from their boundaries. It was at Rome that the censorship of books 
was first invented, and the example was religiously followed by the 
governments devoted to Rome. Leo X, that vaunted protector of 
the arts, issued, in 4515, severe restrictions against printing and 
publishing any books translated from the Greek, Hebrew, or 
Arabic. At the same period that, five years afterwards, he fulmi- 
nated against the Reformation that famous bull which begun: 
" Exsurge, Deus, judica causam taam," (Arise, God! judge thy 
own cause), in which Luther and his adherents were attacked with 
the most terrible anathemas, and in which all men were prohibited 
indiscriminately from reading any of their books whatsoever, and 
on what subject soever they might treat; at that very moment, I 
say, this pontiff did not blush to publish, in the name of Jesus 
Christ, a bull in favour of the profane poems of Ariosto, threaten- 
ing with excommunication those who should find fault with them, 
or obstruct their sale. What was to be expected from such a spirit 
as this, from such an abuse of things, violently converted into 
things sacred, nay thrust into the place of the very oracles of Hea- 
ven itself? France, the most enlightened of all the Catholic coun- 
tries, more enlightened than several Protestant countries, and in 
which Popery never reigned with unlimited sway, in spite of all 
its efforts to confirm its hold and to introduce the inquisition — 
France itself, in w T hich even a .species of half reform existed, under 
the title of Gallican liberties, was not entirely exempted from that 
system of extinguishment. In Spain, in Italy, and Austria the 
prohibitions and censures went much farther, and in those coun- 
tries still impose many shackles on the liberty of writing and 
thinking. These facts, and an immense number of others, which 
are repeated every day, characterise the spirit of Catholicism in 
regard to the propagation of knowledge, and the liberality of 
instruction. The maxim of the middle ages is yet preserved in 
those countries in all the vigour in which it is possible to preserve 
it in the present times ; ' to retain the minds of men on certain 
subjects in complete stupidity ; to keep them as much as possible 
empty, that they may be afterwards filled with anything which is 
found agreeable, and that superstition may find a convenient re- 
ception.' Besides this, the Romish inquisitors prohibited in the 
mass all books printed by sixty-two printers which they denounced 
without any regard to their contents; adding further, a general 



301 



prohibition to read any book issuing from the press of a printer 
who but once in his life had printed anything produced by an he- 
retic. By this means, says an historian, nothing was left to read. 
Never was a better secret found to benumb and corrupt men by 
religion. 

The Reformation broke all those shackles imposed upon the hu- 
man mind, and overthrew all the barriers erected against the free 
communication of thought. Within its boundaries nothing re- 
mained forbidden except productions offensive to modesty and pub- 
lic morals. By recalling the memory of those shackles and 
barriers, by considering the long continuance of barbarity which 
they might still have maintained upon the earth, have we not suf- 
ficiently proved how much the Reformation has contributed to the 
progress and to the diffusion of knowledge? As soon, indeed, as 
by its means the path was opened, men proceeded boldly and pub- 
licly to discuss the best interests of human kind, and to speak like 
men of things pertaining unto men. 

The principle of examination calls forth light, of which it is the 
friend, as that of blind submission is the promoter of darkness. 
And who can calculate the immense extent of the influence of a 
fundamental principle, admitted as the basis of religious, and by 
consequence of moral, instruction in a nation ? The man who is 
free in the inmost sanctuary of his soul looks freely and boldly 
around him. He becomes enterprising, active, and disposed for 
everything that is great aud useful. He who is a slave in his 
conscience, in the very centre of his being, is, without knowing 
that he is so, a slave in his whole conduct. He is by birth a slave, 
from the stupefaction and apathy which unnerve his faculties 1 /' 

The liberty of thought, applied at first to religious topics, was 
soon, by a natural consequence, extended to moral philosophy, 
sciences, the fine arts, and even the soil itself, which man, having 
become more intelligent, could better cultivate : " Agriculture and 
industry, in Protestant countries, grew rich from the suppression of 
numerous feast-days, pilgrimages, nocturnal processions; these 
festivals, lost for activity amidst Catholic communities, are perni- 
cious inducements to idleness and disorder; they are really nega- 
tive quantities, diminishing by so much the sum of national labour 
and riches. 

" How long might the true spirit of commerce, might navigation 
and discovery, have yet languished, if two states, rendered active 



1. Villers, pp. 287, 296. 



302 



by the Reformation (states in which the whole nation unfolded its 
powers, employed all its resources, and seconded the operations of 
government) had not found themselves drawn, and as it were 
constrained to seize upon the trident? Without the religious im- 
pulse produced hy Luther, such would not have been the order of 
events. Holland, a poor portion of the Austrian dominions, would 
have remained without a navy and without commerce ; England 
would not have had that volcanic power she exerted against 
Spain, nor would it have been turned in that direction. In place 
of this, the maritime and commercial system in Europe has, by 
means of those two nations, acquired a magnitude and power pro- 
portioned to the vigour which inspired them. Their fleets and 
skilful sailors have traversed every sea, and surrounded the globe 
itself with their track. Their example has been followed by 
France. Thus has the fermentation produced in Europe by reli- 
gious opinions raised up a new order of things more beneficial to 
human nature V 

Material prosperity, however, is only one of the results of that 
freedom of thought > a more immediate consequence was the diffusion 
of knowledge. The first spark came from theology — theology, so 
disdained at the present time, precisely because all that is known 
of it is a Romish shred or two. Let us listen to Ivi. Villers : 
*■* The whole system of studies relating to Protestant theology differs 
from that of Catholic theology. They are two worlds in opposite 
hemispheres, which have nothing common except the name. 
But that unhappily is sufficient to deceive all those who never go 
farther than the name. The Catholic theology rests on the in- 
flexible authority of the decisions of the Church, and therefore 
debars the man who studies it from all free exercise of his 
reason. It has preserved the jargon, and all the barbarous appen- 
dages of the scholastic philosophy. We perceive in it the work of 
darkness of the monks of the tenth century. In short, the happiest 
thing which can befall him who has unfortunately learnt it, is 
speedily to forget it. Whoever wishes to be instructed in history, 
in classical literature, and philosophy, can choose nothing better 
than a course of Protestant theoiogy. Clergymen reared in this 
manner, proceeding from the universities, go to fill the place 
of pastors and teachers in little villages, and in the country. It 
very often happens that there they establish excellent schools, and 
spread around them the light which they have received from their 

1. Tillers, pp. 281, 282. 



;)03 

masters. The class of our village curates and vicars has in general 
been always very respectable and exemplary ; yet, it must be 
acknowledged, and all those who have been enabled to observe it 
will acknowledge without difficulty, that this class is not less 
exemplary among the Protestants, and among them it is much 
more, and much better instructed. 

" In the mean time, it ought to be observed that this movement 
could have free and unlimited course only in Protestant countries. 
It was alien and contradictory to the system established in the Ca- 
tholic states. Among these, philosophy is to be regarded as a 
disturber of the public peace, or, if you will, of the public apathy ; 
which in the opinion of many people comes nearly to the same thing. 
In Austria, in Italy, and Spain, this philosophical impulse was soon 
spent; and the usual lethargy quickly recovered the ascendant. 
Even in France, a country which ought by no means, as we 
have already demonstrated, to be ranked in the same class with 
the other Catholic countries, the philosophical spirit was soon 
extinguished after the death of Descartes, who indeed, as is well 
known, found the greatest number of his partisans in Holland. 
The interest excited by philosophical truths and systems among 
the English, the Swedes, and the northern Germans, on the other 
hand, far from losing any of its force, appeared to go on invariably 
increasing. London, Halle, Geneva, became the schools from 
which Frenchmen drew their information. Locke and Hume, 
Wolf and Bonnet, became our masters. 

" For the influence of the Reformation on the study of morality 
has not been less decisive than on the other branches of philosophy. 
That science, which is the same thing with regard to the conduct 
of man that metaphysics are with regard to his knowledge, 
had fallen from the time of the last Roman moralists into almost 
total oblivion. It is well known that the fathers of the Church, 
who exhausted all the resources of their minds in doctrinal contro- 
versies, did little, or indeed nothing, toward the moral sciences; 
the schoolmen less; and under their long reign true morality 
disappeared altogether, giving place to casuistry; a degenerate 
species of morality, in which the duties of man towards God, and 
even towards his fellow-creatures, were reduced almost entirely to 
his duties toward the Church; in which a multitude of superstitions 
and practical subtleties corresponded but too well with the su- 
perstitions and subtleties of the theology of that dark period. 
When the Gospel recovered its station, and resumed the place of 



304 



casuistry, the pure and divine morality which it teaches recovered 
its station likewise in the pulpits and the writings of the spiritual 
pastors. 

" Those religious disputes, relating only to different opinions in 
matters of theology and faith, have contributed to preserve alive in 
Protestant countries that spirit of religion, and that attachment to 
Christianity, which is found much more conspicuous than in Ca- 
tholic countries. Far better is it, after all, to dispute about reli- 
gion, than peaceably to consent to have none. Much rather 
dispute about the manner of worshipping God, than disbelieve in 
him altogether, and lie down in neglect and indifference about 
everything which concerns our relation to the Divine Being. 
Still better is it, undoubtedly, sincerely to worship God, and leave 
every man at liberty to perform this great act in his own way. 
This is precisely what the different Protestant people, some sooner, 
some later, came at last to do. They began with argumentation 
and controversy ; they have ended with philosophy and toleration; 
and the religious spirit remains 1 /' 

In conclusion, M. Villers himself compares the results produced 
by the Reformation with those of Papacy : ££ The members of 
that clerical body were besides the pastors, the instructors, the 
depositaries of all knowledge, the masters of all minds. Occupied 
with the external practices of devotion, with the maintenance of the 
rights of the Church, these were almost the only subjects, too, on 
which they addressed the people. Hence resulted a profound 
ignorance and indifference with regard to the most precious in- 
terests of man in society. Agriculture and all kinds of industry 
were in a state of the most deplorable degradation. Such is nearly, 
at this day, their condition in the fine provinces of Naples and 
Rome, in Spain and Portugal. Misery, laziness, immorality, and 
every species of vice, arise among a people from such dispositions; 
and the state remains weak and ill-governed. What activity, on 
the other hand, what perfection in agriculture, in rural economy, 
in the general administration of affairs, strikes the eye of the 
observer amid the cold and barren fields of Scotland, in Great Bri- 
tain, and in Holland ! There the hand of man creates everything, 
because there it labours for itself ; it is there all-powerful, because 
there it is free, and because corresponding information directs it. 
The contrast of these indubitable effects of the two religions is 
more especially perceptible in Germany and in Switzerland, where 



1. Villei?, pp. 307, 310, 316, 320, 361. 



30o 



the different territories intersecting one another make the traveller 
every moment pass from a Protestant country to a Catholic one. 

" If you enter a wretched hovel built of mud with a thatched 
roof; if you pass through neglected fields,, where you are met by 
low, common-looking peasants, and innumerable beggars, you may 
guess pretty safely that the country is a Roman Catholic one. 
On the other hand, are the dwellings clean, pretty-looking 1 , 
offering the aspect of ease and industry; are the fields well enclosed 
and widely cultivated, you are most probably amongst Protestants, 
Anabaptists, or Mennonites. Thus, the aspect of nature seems to 
change in proportion as he whose right it is to give laws to her 
enjoys his freedom more or less ; whilst, however, she seems to 
delight in lavishing her gifts upon the Catholic population inhabit- 
ing the finest countries of Europe. The limited Helvetian terri- 
tory illustrates this singularity in a striking manner. Compare 
the fertile plains of Soleure with the much less favoured soil of 
Aargau ; the stony, barren canton de Vaud, exposed to northern 
influences, with the magnificent Italian Switzerland, or the 
sheltered Valais ; the Neufchatel district with the fruitful locality 
only lately under the rule of the abbot of Saint-Gall ; finally, 
within the states of that prince-monk, compare together the part 
which followed the Romish religion, and the much smaller one 
which, under the protection of Zurich and Berne, had been enabled 
to preserve its adherence to the Reformed faith; you will see in all 
cases man's activity and enlightenment superior even to the 
bounties of lavish nature, whilst those lost benefits are, so to say, 
wasted upon idleness and indolence. Agriculture is brought to 
such a high state of perfection in the country of Berne, that several 
methods introduced by Bernese cultivators have been adopted in 
England; and it is to the agronomical society they have established 
that we owe the true theory of irrigation, the importance of which 
is sufficiently known to farmers 2 . 



1. What traveller has not been struck by the contrast between the fllthiness which prevails 
in Roman Catholic countries, and the extreme cleanliness of the northern Protestant people, 
the Dutch and the English ? Whence the apathy of the one, and the activity to be found 
amongst the other? Whence is it that, here, we lind the spirit of order and of labour; there, 
indolence and idleness? The reason is plain enough. As for mendicancy, everybody knows 
to what an odious and revolting excess it is carried amongst the most Catholic countries ; so 
that we see it increase sensibly as we get nearer the centre of Catholicity, throughout the 
whole of Italy, till we get to Rome, where it reaches its highest point. Whoever, besides, 
has seen only a few Protestant towns and Catholic cities, must have remarked, at one glance, 
the difference which exists between them on the important question of mendicancy. 

2. " If we proceed from the cultivation of the earth to intellectual culture, Switzerland offers 
the same contrast. How many celebrated literary men have sprung from Geneva, men whoms 
science and the belles-lettres claim with pride amongst us ! Berne, Lausanne, Bale, Zurich, 
Schaffausen, can boast of their annals, crowded with illustrious names. The antiquarian 
Morel; Haiier, the creator of philosophy, and equally distinguished as a poet; the two Turretim ; 

T. II. 20 



What the reformers could not effect themselves, the good spirit 
which they had introduced accomplished naturally and by degrees 
in the end. It is remarkable that during the last three centuries, 
beside a great number of inferior establishments, Germany has 
been enriched with more than twenty universities, of which three- 
fourths are Protestant. England founded three and Holland five. 
On the part of the Catholics, six were founded in Italy, eight in 
Spain, and three in France. Not only have the Protestants the 
advantage, which might be equivocal, in point of number, but no 
reasonable person will entertain a doubt that they have it also in 
respect to the instruction which is given in those universities. It 
would not, I apprehend, be considered a very extravagant paradox 
if I were to assert that there is more real knowledge in a single uni- 
versity, such as that of Gottingen, or Halle, or Jena, than in the 
eight Spanish universities of San-Yago de Compostella, of Alcala, 
Orihueia, etc. In these is taught what must be believed whether 
agreeable to reason or not; in the other is taught how a person may 
arrive at a reasonable belief in whatever is presented to his mind. 
In the one place the Decretals are given as infallible oracles; in 
the other no oracle is acknowledged but reason and well-esta- 
blished facts. On this account it is natural that pedantry, the 
child of the scholastic discipline, should be infinitely more rare in 
the Protestant schools than in the others % " 

" Finally, the morals of Protestant nations are incontestably more 
strict and purer than those of Catholic people. Is this fact the 
consequence of the nations being Protestant? ur is it vice versa? 
I leave others to decide the question V 

We see plainly, therefore, that the weightiest authorities affirm, 
respecting the generality of Protestant nations, what we have 
ourselves recognised as true of the most considerable amongst 
them. We are, then, perfectly justified in applying our conclu- 
sions to the whole of Christendom, and in ascribing to the principles 
of the Reformation itself the great superiority of Protestant com- 
munities. 

The liberalism which is its essence has brought about the pro- 
gress of human intellect; it began by breaking the fetters under 
which the mind of man was groaning; then, confident of the merits 

the father and the ?011; Qrousas, the Buxtorf,, the WerenfeU, Bernoulli, Euler [Christopher and 

/saac), hehn, the lirst who conceived the idea of writing a philosophical historv of mankind; the 
*v easterns ot Basle; Gessner, the naturalist; Gessner the poet ; Bodmer, etc., etc., who have 
contributed so much towards the revival of polite literature in Germany ; and a host of other great 
men, in line, whom it is superfluous to enumerate. Catholic Switzerland, on the contrai-v," ha* 
not one illustrious name to mention in anv branch of human learning " (Tillers 1 
1; ; Tillers, pp. 328, 330. — 2. Idem, p/ 303. 



;h)7 



of its cause , it did not dread to court inquiry, whilst Popery, from 
a totally opposite motive, prudently proscribed free examination. 

To the ethical doctrines enforced by the Reformation are due 
the comparatively pure morals of its adherents. Liberty may 
instruct, but it does not moralise; hence, a second proof that the 
Reformation is really built upon the truth. 

To conclude, the material prosperity of the same communities, 
the natural result of labour, intelligence, and good order, must be 
ascribed to the union of the liberalism and the moral tenets advo- 
cated by the Reformation. Without morality, what would be tem- 
poral happiness but an incentive to the passions, a blossom destined 
to perish in the course of one day ? But, as we see prosperity 
developing itself in a contrary direction, we may consider it as an 
offshoot of the tree of life. 

Such is the present condition of Protestant nations : from the 
facts already stated we shall now deduce what their future is likely 
to be. 



FUTURE DESTINIES 



OF PROTESTANT NATIONS 



If we acknowledge that intellect, prosperity, and morality are 
the fruits of Protestantism, it is as much as to say that the future 
is its own ; and, in fact, when we study the actual position of the 
Protestant nations, and their rapid progress in the path of civilisa- 
tion, we cannot help heing struck with their immense resources, 
and the giant strides they are making towards the conquest of the 
world. Let us first remark that the two most prosperous countries, 
England and the United States, are Protestant. England, who 
owns one hundred and sixty millions of men, has "been compelled, 
by sheer necessity, to turn her thoughts to navigation; the very 
thing which will carry her influence and ideas to the remotest 
points of the globe. Doubtless, her hundred and sixty millions of 
men are not all Protestant; but they are all likely to become so. 
Ireland, for instance, now no longer under the Great Agitator's in- 
fluence, and sufficiently calm to listen to Protestant preaching, 
Ireland is entering the true road of reform. The Romish clergy, 
who accuse the Protestants of buying these conversions, acknow- 
ledge, by this charge, the fact of which they complain. Others 
emigrate to the United States, and there, free from the fear of their 
priests, they quietly adopt the belief of the country they inhabit. 
In consequence both of these conversions at home, and emigrations 
abroad, the change has been such, that Ireland, which was lately 



310 



three-fourths Catholic, is now nearly half Protestant. Twenty-five 
Protestant societies continue the work of proselytism, and carry it 
on by every available means. Churches are erected, schools, hos- 
pitals, and workshops established in order to instruct and relieve 
the poor suffering Irish Catholics. In India, the progress is not- 
less remarkable; there, the heathen temples are falling to ruins, " 
the priests are discouraged, the native youth congregate in the 
institutions of the English, and the people, formerly idolatrous, 
flock round the preachers of the Gospel. We will not argue on the 
intrinsic merits of Christian doctrines, in order to predict the con- 
version of India to Protestantism ; but the unbeliever himself must- 
admit that the wealth, the power, and the intellectual superiority 
of the English, compared to the Hindoos, will, as a matter of conse- 
quence, finally procure a complete triumph for the faith of the 
former over that of a people already quite reduced to their political 
rule. Old prejudices are shaken, a general movement will soon 
follow ; the least that we can say of it is, that it is a mere question 
of time. 

And the United States of America, do they not admirably second 
the work of their mother country? Does it not seem as if the whole 
of Europe was acting under the direction of a providential impulse, 
when it throws out its population towards Protestant North Ame- 
rica, who, in her turn, transforms them, and scatters them abroad 
throughout the Catholic regions of the South? At the very time that 
the revolutions of the Old World are frightening its inhabitants, the 
gold mines of California attract to the New World Irish, Germans, 
French — all Catholic ; and, though we will not venture to say 
that they uniformly become Protestants as soon as they arrive there, 
yet they, at least, willingly allow their children to be instructed in 
the great truths of the Gospel. The Irish, supposed to be so fondly 
attached to their religion, but who are often only intimidated by 
their priests in their own country ; the Irish, who, in the course of 
a few years, have given to the United States millions of emigrants ; 
the Irish, we say, have become there, five-sixths of them, Protes- 
tants. In those countries religious, or, if you prefer, clerical acti- 
vity follow the movement imparted to agriculture, industry, and 
commerce. It is the same activity, the same life. Catholics arrive 
from all parts ; the Protestant populations open to them churches, 
schools, workshops, colonies, and the two races are so completely 
assimilated that in the second generation they form one homogeneous 
whole. The proof of this is the fact that the United States, com- 
posed in great part of emigrants; the United States, which have 



m 

seen, in the course of twenty years, their population increase from 
12 to 23 millions, are now Protestant for 39 out of every 40, although 
the emigrants, on their arrival, were chiefly Catholics! At the same 
time that the Protestant United States ahsorb the population which 
they attract from without, they likewise invade and assimilate to 
themselves the neighbouring countries : California, Texas, Mexico, 
have each come to join the Union, as if constrained by the force of 
an irresistible attraction. In order to ground our assertions upon a 
true basis, we have consulted the last census published by order of 
Congress, and the following are the results : 



AT THE PRESENT DAY. 



Catholic churches. 

Maryland all. 

Florida all. 

Louisiana .... all. 



Protest. Do. Galh. churches. Protest. Do. 
68 800 

' 5 Uf 

55 223 



The first of these three states was colonised by the English ; the 
second, by the Spaniards; the third, by the French. 

Nationality, therefore, has had no influence; everywhere Catho- 
licism has equally disappeared. Texas, originally Spanish, and 
recently annexed to the United States, has now only 13 Catholic 
churches, and already 161 Protestant. Protestantism is now also 
the religion of the majority of Californians. In a word, the whole 
of the United States contain only 1,112 Roman Catholic places of 
worship, capable of accomodating 621,000 persons; this is about 
one-fourth of the entire population; yet how many went out as Ca- 
tholics from Ireland, France, Bavaria, and Austria. If we look at 
the social position of this half-million of Catholics in the United 
States, we find that they are as wretched as their number is small. 
Very few of them are to be met with in the catalogue of statesmen, 
orators, magistrates; but they form the majority of the inmates of 
unions and prisons . In a judicial inquiry recently made at Boston, 
a Protestant city, it was proved that out of 40 children imprisoned 
for crimes and misdemeanour, 38 were the children of Catholics. 
At nearly all the public executions it is a priest who accompanies 
the criminal, thus showing plainly what his religion is. We 
repeat that these facts are uniformly drawn from official docu- 
ments lately published by Congress. 

The day is not far distant when Cuba, either purchased or con- 
quered, shall pass from the drowsy dominion of the Spaniards to 
the vivifying influence of the Anglo-Saxons, Whilst the popula- 



312 



tions of Europe and of America are becoming one in the Reformed 
religion, the Congress at Washington meditates the commercial 
conquest of Japan, just as England lately secured that of China. 
That these two nations should succeed in the first instance is out of 
the question ; hut they have made the undertaking : this is the im- 
portant point, and we know their perseverance. 

The foregoing considerations lead us to touch upon a fact most 
extraordinary , if we think of the natural course of events. A rebel, 
as obscure a few years ago as he is now illustrious and powerful, a 
rebel, who has already conquered the greater part of the Celestial 
Empire, and is at present besieging the capital — this rebel, in his 
victorious march, destroys the idols, calls himself a Christian, and 
circulates the Scriptures. We do not pretend to approve either 
of revolt or massacre ; but, looking at results which alone can here 
engage our attention, is it not admirable to see a nation, forming 
one-third of the human race, — a nation until lately walled- 
in against European influence, — to see them, we say, sweeping 
away the rubbish of their heathen temples, in order to facilitate 
the entrance of the English and American missionaries, who are 
already preaching in their sea-ports, nay, even further inland! 
Here, again, can we not foresee at some future time, more or less 
remote, the final success of the two great Protestant nations, when 
we think that commercial treaties bind them with China, that they 
have already gained possession of her towns, and that their believ- 
ing populations are ready to spend not only money but life iu 
the propagation of true religion. Have we not a right to expect 
much from two countries, one of whom has so liberally answered 
to the call of the Bible Society, and supplied the necessary funds 
towards sending to China one million Bibles, whilst the other has 
already opened Chinese Christian churches in San Francisco, the 
very seat of the gold fever. 

The influence of England is felt not only far off, but nearer home; 
in Portugal, where commerce seems exlusively in the hands of the 
British; in Spain, where navigation and trade are conducted by sub- 
jects of the United Kingdom; Piedmont, where, according to the 
Romish clergy themselves, a continual flow of travellers leave behind 
them thousands of Bibles, and where Protestant churches are daily 
erected in every city; the Legislative Chambers, in the meanwhile, 
depriving the Popish priests of their means of influence over the 
people. 

In France, for the last fifty years, the work of Protestantism has 
been carried on by the organised remains of a church which, before 



313 



the season of persecution counted thousands of members, whilst it is 
now recovering its strength through its victories over the Catholic 
population. M. Nicolas says : " France is Protestant." This asser- 
tion is only half true. She is Protestant inasmuch as she has re- 
jected ultramontanism; the people are Protestant in name, but not 
in faith; that is all. Although they have never taken the sacra- 
ment twice, they send their children to make their first communion; 
they marry their young people at a church where they are never to 
be seen either on Sundays or fete-days ; respect for public opinion 
alone makes them call in a priest to bury their dead. No : France is 
not sincerely, thoroughly a Catholic country; and as soon as she can 
be openly told and made to understand that the religion of Christ is 
not the religion of the Pope, then France will listen to the Gospel as 
she did in the sixteenth century, and has done even in our own 
time. 

Shall we not speak of the progress Protestantism has made in the 
Polynesian Islands, those islands formerly peopled by savages, and 
now declared so well instructed that the American missionaries feel 
warranted in withdrawing to other spheres of action. Shall we 
allude to the coasts of Africa, where colonies of liberated negro 
slaves prosper without the interference of their white rescuers ! 
Shall we enumerate the missions spread over the habitable globe ! 
No; let us be silent ourselves, but invoke, by way of conclusion, the 
testimony of the Journal des Debats in favour of the subject which 
is now engaging our attention : — 

" If we consider, " says M. Michel Chevalier, " the progress 
made since d8I4 by nations which are not Catholic, and compare it 
with the increase of power obtained during the same time by 
Catholic countries, we shall be astonished at the disproportion. 
England and the United States, both Protestant, have acquired, to 
an extent hitherto unknown, the dominion over immense regions 
destined to be one day widely populated, and over numerous tribes 
of people already existing. England has sought to conquer those 
mighty and densely inhabited regions known under the general 
name of India. In America she has spread civilisation throughout 
the northern continent, in the deserts §f Upper Canada. The in- 
dustry of her children has procured for her the whole of Australia 
— an island which is as large as a continent, and she has thrown 
off branches in the principal groups with which that vast ocean is 
studded. The United States have mightily increased in population 
and riches throughout the superficies of their ancient territory. 
They have removed the boundaries which confined them, formerly 



31 i 



drawn to a very narrow limit; on the borders of the Atlantic : they 
are now seated upon both oceans. San Francisco is another New 
York, and seems likely to become soon equal to it at least. They 
have proved their superiority over the Catholic communities of Ame- 
rica, and assumed, in that respect, a power which is not even dis- 
puted. To England and the United States, after the attempt made by 
the former in China, is apparently reserved the glory of overcoming 
the two greatest empires in the whole East, viz., China and Japan; 
two empires which comprise, numerically, the half of the human 
race. In the meanwhile, what has been the progress of the Catholic 
countries ? The first of all, the most united, the most glorious — 
France, which, fifty years ago, seemed to give laws to the civilised 
world, has seen her sceptre broken, and her power overthrown by 
unheard-of disasters . It is true that she has roused herself with the 
noblest courage, with indomitable energy; but whenever the ob- 
server may have thought she was about to make a sudden effort, 
some revolution, sent as a scourge by the Almighty, has paralysed 
her energy, and brought her to the ground. The balance of power 
between Catholic and non-Catholic civilisation has evidently been 
broken ever since 1789 *. " 

Let us confirm the authority of M. Michel Chevalier by that of 
M. John Lemoinne : — 

" The spirit of Him who walked upon the waters, says this 
writer, (C pursues across the seas the work of expansion and of 
propagation which will only finish with time itself. ' You go to 
the right; ' I go to the left f says the proverb : ' thus, walking 
round the world, we shall at length meet again/ Well, these 
words will be accomplished, and by the sons of that adventurous 
race scattered in every locality of whom it has been said toto divisos 
orbe Britannos. The English and the Americans have started, the 
former towards the East, the latter towards the West; and they 
will meet again after having journeyed round the globe. The 
great wall of China is the only obstacle theyhave to overthrow, 
and within a little while English and Americans will have taken 
between two fires that last entrenchment. 

" We are writing no fable. Sooner or later the English will 
take possession of China; further extension is a necessary condi- 
tion of their conquests. 

(< Whilst the English march forwards to the attack of Ancient 
Asia, on the other hand the Americans are putting themselves in 



1. Journal it$ Debate, Sept, 1853. 



315 

motion in order to reach the same terminus by way of the Pacific 
Ocean. The United States government have sent a squadron to 
Japan ; they have issued a kind of political manifesto , from which 
we shall quote the principal passage : 

" f We do not allow any nation, occupying any part of the habit- 
able world, the right to refuse all commercial intercourse with 
other nations. Civilised and Christian governments may force bar- 
barians to submit to the general law r V " 

If w e have quoted these w r ords, it is because they place together 
the two antagonistic principles which, at this present time, are 
continuing in the far East the struggle begun for the last eighteen 
centuries : the principle of expansion, and the principle of exclu- 
sion. The English and Americans are not merely conquerors; they 
are the missionaries of civilisation, of humanity, of the rights of 
nations, of social life ; in a word, of Christianity. 

i( Governments no longer carry on religious wars; the work of 
proselytism is one with which they have nothing to do. We even 
see the governments of England and the United States disclaiming 
most expressly all intention of religious proselytism. They may say 
what they please, but they are missionaries in spite of themselves. 
Proselytism is not conducted by an official society; the missionary 
army consists of volunteers; it generally recruits its adherents 
amongst the dissenters. It is all very well for the governments of 
England and the United States to tell the Chinese and Japanese 
that they do not wish to convert them; they can no more hinder 
the work of religious propagandism than prevent the earth from 
turning on its axis. " 

However rational these surmises may be, we acknowledge that 
they lead us beyond our subject, w r hich is the present state of 
nations ; to our subject, therefore, we return, for the purpose of 
drawing our inferences. 



1. John Lemoinne, Journal dea Debau, May 3 and 10, 1832. 



I 

I 



INFERENCES. 



Our first inference has surely been already drawn by the reader's 
mind ; we shall therefore just state it : taken either separately or 
together, the Protestant nations are superior to the Catholic, under 
the threefold point of view of Wealth, Knowledge, and Morality. 

This preliminary conclusion implies a second, which it is right 
we should insist upon. A man who knows anything of the mo- 
dern history of the world must acknowledge, not only that Chris- 
tianity is superior to every other religion, but that its superiority is 
immense. The civilisation of the Romans was warlike, that of the 
Greeks, artistic. The Chinese are distinguished by industry : 
Christian civilisation alone is moral, and that single feature must 
place it infinitely above every other form of social development. 
It is Christianity which has liberated the slave, raised woman to 
her proper station, given an impulse to charity, by opening hos- 
pitals at home, and sending missionaries abroad ; thus realising 
the Scripture precept , " Ye are all brethren; " and introducing 
into the world the new doctrine of self-denial practised with humi- 
lity — self-denial towards all ; even our enemies ! We might also 
notice that Christianity is superior to every other religion with 
respect to the arts and sciences. Elsewhere, discoveries have been 
made ; we have mastered principles. We proceed from consequence 
to consequence; allow us time, and we may depend upon reaching 
the promised end. Christian knowledge, therefore, must necessarily 
be progressive ; intellectual vigour, on the contrary, of a merely 
human character, has decayed in Greece, and it is now languishing 
in China. But we desire to keep to the one point of morality, and to 
show, in doing so, the immense superiority of Christianity. 

This fact, besides, is so evident that we do not think any of our 



318 



readers will question it; we only recall it in order to arrive at the 
following conclusions : 

if Christianity is superior to every other religion, and if at the 
same time the Reformation is better than Popery , it follows that 
Protestantism comes nearer true Christianity than Romanism does. 
We do not pretend to affirm that Protestantism has already borne 
all the fruits which it is capable of producing ; all we maintain is 
this : the Roman tree never yielded a crop so nourishing, so 
pleasant to the taste. Perhaps we shall be more accurate in repre- 
senting Romanism as the wild tree; whilst the Reformation is a 
young plant bearing the graft of the Gospel. In a word, Protest- 
antism is much more like Christianity. 

We hardly think that any attentive reader of the foregoing- 
work will dispute the truth of this second conclusion, but it is only 
for us a link which brings us to the third inference, the most im- 
portant of all. 

We do not flatter ourselves. Many of our readers, we know, 
will stop at the point we have now reached; many will say : Pro- 
testantism is more in accordance with the Gospel; it is more 
favourable to civilisation; we sympathise with it, and, if needs be, 
we will lend it our support. But, reader, there is one more reflec- 
tion you should make : if Protestantism, or rather its parent, Chris- 
tianity, is by far the religion most calculated to do good, this 
religion is then the true one. We stated it at our very outset : 

i( Good deeds are the result of truth; evil is the result of false- 
hood; two modes of expressing the same idea : the true and the 
good are intimately connected, or, to speak more correctly, they 
are but one. " 

Our legitimate conclusion, then, is : Christianity is Truth ; it 
comes from God; for it professes to be a revelation, and cannot lie. 

No doubt this last inference reaches far beyond the former ones; 
m even acknowledge that it is only indirectly the result of our 
previous statements; but, mark, such an indirect proof is only the 
more powerful and the more simple; it comes to this argument of 
the divine founder of the Gospel/ u By their fruits ye shall know 
them. A good tree cannot bear evil f rait, neither can an evil tree 
bring forth good fruit. Do men gather grapes from thistles, or 
figs from thorns? * No. Therefore Christianity, which alone has 
brought down charity upon earth, and produced good will amongst 
men:; Christianity, which regenerates a fallen creature, Christianity 
is the truth ! 



LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED IN THE WORK. 



(Our quotations are often abridged, but we have always preserved 
their textuality.) 

Annales de la Propagation de la foi. 

Arragon (Madame, membre de PAthenee de Paris). Souvenirs d'un 

voyage en Suisse. 
Archenolz (d'). Tableau de PAngleterre. 
Aubigne (Merle d'). Trois siecles de iuttes en Ecosse. 
Balbi (Adrien). Abrege de geographic 

Beaumont (Gastave de). L'Irlande sociale, politique et religieuse. 
Bernard. Histoire de PAutriche. 

Bonaparte (Louis). Documents historiques sur la Hollande. 
Bouyier. Dissertatio in sextum Decalogum prseceptum. Paris 1819. 
Briffault (E.). Le secret de Rome. 
Dublin University Magazine, 1853. 

Buchon. Quelques souvenirs de courses en Suisse, et dans te pays 
de Bade. 

Bulletin de la Societe du Protestantisme franeais, 1853. 

Bureaud (docteur de la Faculte de medecine de Paris). Londres et 

les Anglais des temps modernes. 
Cambry. Voyage pittoresque en Suisse. 
Catteau. Voyage en Allemagne et en Suede. 
Chevalier (Victor). Etude sur Passistance publique en Angleterre. 
Chevalier (Michel). Lettres sur PAmerique du Nord. 
Coxe. Voyage en Suisse. 

Cousin. Memoire sur Pinstruction secondaire dans le royaume de 
Prusse. 

— Rapport sur Petat de Pinstruction publique dans quelques 
pays de PAllemagne. 



320 



Cousin. De Finstruction publique en Hollande. 
Custine. Memoir es et voyages. 

Depping. La Suisse, ou tableau historique, pittoresque et moral des 

cantons helvetiques. 
Descombaz. Histoire des Missions evangeliques. 
Desprez. Les Peuples d'Autriche. 
Didier (Charles). Campagne de Rome. 
Dictionnaire de la Conversation. 
Dill (E.-M.). Ireland's miseries: their cause and cure. 
Dory (Alphonse). Souvenirs d' Angleterre. 

Ducpetiaux (Ed.). De Ffitat de Finstruction primaire et populaire 
en Belgique, par Ducpetiaux, inspecteur des prisons et des etablis- 
sements de bienfaisance. 

Dubois (depute de la Seine-Inf^rieure). Rapport sur Finstruction fait 
a la Chambre des Deputes en 1836. 

Durand. Statistique de la Suisse. 

Europe Protestante, 1839 et 1840. 

Faucher (Leon). Etudes sur FAngleterre. 

Ferriere (Alexandre). Analyse de la statistique generale de la 

France, publiee sous Fautorisation du ministre de Pinterieur. 
Franscini (S.). Nova statistics dell a Svizzera, 1847. 
Genin. L'Eglise ou FEtat. 

Girardin ( Saint-Marc ). De Finstruction intermediaire et deson 

dtat dans le midi de i'Allemagne. 
Goodrich (S.-G.). Les Etats-Unis de FAmerique, par Goodrich. 

consul des Etats-Unis a Paris. 
Guerry (de). Statistique morale. 
Gueroult. Lettres surFEspagne. 
Guizot. Histoire de la civilisation en France. 
Haussez (baron d'). La Grande-Bretagne en 1833. 

— Alpes et Danube. 
Heine (Henry). De FAllemagne. 

Hennequin. Voyage philosophique en Angleterre et en Ecosse. 
Jacquemin. L'Allemagne agricole, industrielle et politique. 
John Carr. Voyage en Hollande. 

Jonnes (Moreau de). La Prusse, son progres politique et social. 

— Statistique de la Grande-Bretagne et de FJrlande, 2 vols. 
Keratry (ancien depute). Du Culte en general. 

Laborde. Uineraire descriptif de FEspagne. 

Lamennais. Affaires de Rome. 

Lautier. Les Voyage urs en Suisse. 

Leduc (Germain). V Angleterre, FEcosse et Plrlande. 



Lloiiente. Histoire critique do Pinquisition d'Esjpagne. 

Lorain. Tableau de rinstriiction primaire en France, d'apres des 

documents aulhentiques. 
Lutheroth (H.). O-Taiti, histoire et enquete. 
Malte-Brun. Geographic, 16 vol. in-8°. 
Martin (Henri). Histoire de France. 

MiNisTRE (de l'interieur, Belgique). Statistique generale du royaume 

de Belgique, publiee par le ministre (periode de 1841 a 1850.) 
Mirabeau. Monarchic prussienne. 
Montuli. Voyage en Angleterre. 

More. Le Bresil en 1852 et sa colonisation future, notice ecrite sur 
des documents communiques par le consulat Suisse a Rio-de- 
Janeiro. 

Muller. Histoire de la Confederation Suisse. 

Nicolas (Auguste). Du Protestantisme et de toutes les Heresies dans 

leurs rapports avec le Socialisme. 
Nougarede. Lettres sur FAngleterre. 
Omalius. Notions elementaires de statistique. 
Orbigny (d'). Voyage dans TAmeriquemeridionale, execute en 1826 

et 1833, par Alcide d'Orbigny, publie sous les auspices de M. le 

ministre de ^instruction publique. 
Pebrer. Histoire financiere et statistique generale de Fempire Bri- 

tannique. 

Pichot. L'Iriande et le pays de Galles. 
Picot. Statistique de la Suisse. 

Porter. Progres de la Grande-Bretagne sous le rapport de la popu- 
lation. 

Poussin. La Belgique et les Beiges depuis 1830, Paris, 1845. 
Prevost. Voyage en Irlande. 

Quetelet. Recherches statistiques sur le royaume des Pays-Bas. 

Bruxelles, 1829. 
Quinet (Edgar). De PUltramontanisme. 

— Le christianisme et la revolution franca ise. 
Raoul-Rochette. Lettres sur la Suisse. 

Raumer (professeur d'histoire aFuniversite de Berlin). U Angleterre 

en 1835. 
Reyue Britannique. 
Revue des Deux-Mondes. 
Rey, L'Autriche, la Hongrie et la Turquie. 
Rougemont. Precis d'ethnographie, de statistique et de geographic 

historique. 

Rubichon. De 1'Action du clerge dans les societes modernes. 

T. XL. 21 



322 



Saint-Hilaire (Rossew). Histoire d'Espagne. 

Schnitzler (J.-H.). Statistique generale, metbodique et complete de 

la France, comparee aux autres grandes puissances de PEurope, 

4 vol. in-8°. 
Severe . Histoire d'Espagne. 
Serres (Marcel de). L'Autriche. 
Siecle (Journal le). v 

Simon. Observations recueillies en Angleterre. 
Sismondi. Histoire de la liberte en ltalie. 

— Republiques italiennes. 

— Litterature du midi de FEurope. 

Solitaire (le). Souvenirs d'un voyageur, ou Meditations sur le ca- 

ractere national des Anglais. 
Sommerlatt. Geograpnie de la Suisse. 
Stael (Madame de). Lettres sur F Angleterre. 

— de 1'Allemagne. 
Statistique nationale de la France. 

Statistique des bagnes en 1852. Paris imprimerie imperiale, 1854> 

publie par le ministere de la Marine et des Colonies. 
Taillandier. Histoire de la jeune Allemagne. 
Tardif. Des Peuples europeens. 
Tocqueville. De la democratie aux Etats-Unis. 
Trabaud. Notes et sentiments sur les lies Britanniques. 
Tristan (Madame Flora). Promenades dans Londres. 
Troliope (Mistress). Yienne et les Autrichiens. 
Univers pittoresque. 
Walsh. Voyage en Suisse. 
Warden. Cbronologie bistorique de FAmerique. 
Weiss. L'Espagne depuis le regne de Pbilippe II. 

— Histoire des refugies protestants de France, 1853. 
Vinet (Alexandre.) Tbeologie Pastorale. 
Viel-Castel (comte de). De Y Angleterre et de la France. 
Villers. Essai sur Fesprit et Finnuence de la reformation de 

Lutber. 
Wilnes (Journal le). 
Zschokjle. Histoire de la Suisse. 
Zurlauren (le baron de). Tableaux de la Suisse. 
Anontmes. De FAutricbe et de son avenir. 

Memoire sur la cour de Louis-Napoleon et sur la Hol- 
lande. 



V ^ * a c> 






1 ^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Jan. 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



